Fruit Flies
by BC
Summary: The Winter Soldier thing is worrying, but hey, they're building a home here. Or, you know, a castle. Digging the moat. Planting the shrubbery. Tending the hearth. That sort of thing.
1. Digging the Moat

Fruit Flies

Summary: The Winter Soldier thing is worrying, but hey, they're building a home here. Or, you know, a castle. Digging the moat. Planting the shrubbery. Tending the hearth. That sort of thing.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything Marvel-related; I don't get paid for writing this.

Warnings: Deadpool! (srsly, I love him but he's fucking whacked), profanity, violence, gore, temporary character death, torture, brainwashing, body horror, vaguely implied past noncon, trauma galore, psychosis, insanity, dark humor, ableism, unreliable narrator, do I have to warn for slash?, sexual situations verging on explicit… uh, existentialism?

A/N: Thanks for the ideas, kitmarlowescot2. I could actually see those things happening.

So, timeline-wise, this doesn't happen long after they get together. My rough estimation is about six months. They've got some equilibrium by now, but not everything is figured out yet.

Also, especially new readers, please keep in mind that at the time Said the Fly to the Spider was written, neither the Deadpool nor the Civil War movies were out. These characters are not MCU characters. Peter is _twenty_. Vanessa is only referenced as part of Wade's past.

Fair warning – I cried over this one. It should still be funny, hopefully, but it's not as – and I hesitate to use the word here – _light-hearted_ as _Said the Fly to the Spider_. It wasn't intentional. I blame Bucky. What? Everybody does it. But, seriously, mind the _horror_ warning.

x

Part One: Digging the Moat

x

The strangest thing about the Winter Soldier is the quiet.

Peter thinks it may be in the name. The man – because he is unmistakably a man – is silent like a ghost. He can be anywhere at any time, and it takes Peter a little while to stop trembling whenever he hears the name these days. It still sets off shivers down his spine.

The first time Peter 'meets' the Winter Soldier, it is a sweltering hot afternoon, the kind you see in westerns with the tumbleweeds rolling across the stony field to emphasize the sense of futility, with Morricone about to begin playing. This is New York, though, so there are no tumbleweeds, and instead of a harmonica you can hear the distant sounds of traffic.

The SHIELD soldiers are on the ground, waiting, strategically spread around several black vans and SUVs. Peter is kind of impressed by the lack of SHIELD insignia anywhere.

 _Clang-thrummm_ goes Steve's shield, and suddenly there's motion, motion everywhere, hectic and disorganized, and Peter frankly has no idea what is happening until he sees Clint rise from where he had instinctively taken cover and point. Peter turns to follow the line of sight and sees a silhouette jump over a street to another rooftop, roll to their feet and run.

He shoots a web, tries to follow, but the figure disappears while he's in the middle of the swing.

Down in the street the SHIELD agents mill around, traffic is still a distant buzz, and Captain America gawps at his shield, which has been, from that angle, far harder to hit than any of his vital points.

Lucky, Peter thinks, and then scoffs at the naïve notion.

He's been in the biz long enough to know it doesn't work like that.

x

"Whadya bet they're in their knickers, having a pillow fight?"

Peter, by dint of much experience, skips over the idea with nary a mental image.

Wade's switch is permanently stuck on the _irreverent_ setting. Initially Peter wasn't sure if there could be solid exceptions to that. If there couldn't, this entire endeavor would have been doomed from the start – there are things on which Peter will not compromise.

Most notably, Aunt May's safety and well-being.

Funny, he thinks as he walks up the street to the house that he grew up in, his boyfriend half a step behind him, scanning the neighborhood for potential trouble. _Funny_ , that Wade Wilson, the Merc with the Mouth, the person who makes you stop and turn around and rethink what you thought you knew, what you took for certain, for true, for right, for granted – that this guy would be the one to teach Peter a little bit more about wisdom.

Aunt May's begonias are slowly but inexorably dying in the sweltering heat.

Peter mourns the state of his suit.

He moves past the row of flowerbeds Uncle Ben had bought and installed along the path as a surprise for Aunt May's forty-first birthday. The edges of the containers are beginning to crumble, but it will be a long time yet before any maintenance would be done on them. Peter doubts his Aunt will ever allow them to be removed.

Uncle Ben was a wise man, in his way. Peter used to think of him as the wisest man he had ever known, but the fact is that Uncle Ben was a very humble man, preferred to live his life close to the ground and, while wise, he quite lacked the vantage point from the tops of Manhattan's skyscrapers. The world up there, Peter now knows, is very different from the world down here.

And yet different from the world in other parts of the country, and in other countries and on other continents.

Uncle Ben led a small life.

Peter doesn't.

Peter doesn't even pretend to lead a small life anymore. No point to it. He enters the house and finds Aunt May and Blind Alfred, back from their weekly bridge tournament, sitting at the coffee table in Aunt May's living room and sharing dainty little glasses of sherry.

"Hey, Al!" Wade calls out, blindly chucking his keys into the bowl – not for any other reason than because he likes the sound it makes; it reminds him he's been invited to consider this house his _home_. "How much did ya rake in?"

"Lost a couple grand!" Al shouts back, pissy.

"Impossible!" Wade exclaims and flings himself through the door to the living room. "You fleece me every time we play!"

"Yeah," Al scoffs. "But May cheats better than you do. Hullo Pete. C'mere-"

Peter obediently goes to give her a hug and kiss on the cheek – valiantly tries to ignore the pat to his backside and a related, stage-whispered compliment – and then repeats the process with Aunt May, who puts her hands in safe places yet keeps looking at him like she's proud of him and, crud, this is weird.

"Strawberries," Peter says and puts a box of them on the table.

"Champagne?" inquires Alfred.

Wade reassures her that there's enough alcohol to drown a Tony Stark in, and flits around the house, comfortable, making the space his own. He brings out a bottle of a clear liquid that experience tells Peter is not fit for metahuman consumption, much less human, and there's the expected clinking of glass.

Peter squeezes into the corner of the couch, exhausted to the bone, and lets himself relax.

Uncle Ben used to have a saying about power and responsibility, but Peter knows better now. The truth is that, with great power should come great responsibility, but it hardly ever does, and that's why the world needs heroes. And heroes are always only people, so they mess up. Peter has a bet with himself: how far, how long, how hard can he go, before something forces him to give up?

He watches as Wade feeds Alfred a strawberry, mocking her lack of eyesight but surreptitiously pushing the box where her hand would bump into it – and maybe overturn it, but that's Wade for you.

Selfishness is unheroic. And Peter's very selfish, in taking up with a man that will undoubtedly outlive him.

x

The Avengers come down really hard on some sort of Hydra-related organization.

Peter is emphatically _not_ invited along on the op, so he patrols.

He saves people from being robbed, sometimes from being killed. Meth-heads are stupid and violent, and dealing with them makes Peter sad, but it makes him less sad than meth-heads killing someone in their stupid and violent drug-fuelled rampages, so in the end that sort of evens up to making him happy?

He wishes minds worked like math. Math is simpler than superherodom.

x

The microwave blows up.

Peter barely flinches. He shouldn't have left Wade unsupervised – Wade can make the world's best pancakes and tacos and not much else, so the tin can chicken soup was pushing it, and he has known.

He admits to himself that he was simply curious.

"Whoops," says Wade, somewhere far off enough and quiet enough that Peter can pretend he hasn't heard. " _We're fine!_ "

"Who is _we_?" inquires Peter, contemplating the next semester's curriculum and wondering if Professor Iglesias would let him into the Advanced Forensic Psychology course. It is technically not available to people in the Biophysics major, but Peter is motivated.

"Me and the twenty piggies!" Wade calls back.

Case in point.

"Are you sure there's all twenty of them?"

Not that it would matter much in any run longer than a few minutes. Peter is learning to laugh off mild bodily harm to his boyfriend. He's well aware that it's not a sane response, except that when you force yourself to view the reality of Deadpool in all its demented circumstances you realize that it's _the only_ sane response.

Not that sanity means much in their business.

Huh, maybe Peter should sign up for a Philosophy course, too. _Philosophy of Superheroes_. It's been trending lately, and he may be spending most of his time with the science nerds (who _en masse_ tend to view hipsters as a different species) but he's part-journalist himself, and a lot of his friends have gone the soft-science route. Oh, and then there's Tony's contingent of PR people who have more knowhow in their little fingers than J.J. could ever hope to amass.

"…seventeen… sixteen… fifteen…"

Peter jumps to his feet and across the room, sticking to the doorframe, just shy of cannon-balling his boyfriend.

"Huh?" Wade glances up, distracted from counting his fingers.

Peter huffs and lets go of the wall. "Countdowns," he explains. "Trigger." Darn it, he hasn't reacted like this even to the explosion itself.

Wade's face does something awful – which, on top of its general kind-of awfulness, is a whole lot of awful.

He's sorry, Peter knows. He doesn't need to be. He doesn't need to say it. It's okay.

"It's okay," Peter says.

Wade doesn't look like he believes the assurance, but he lunges forward, grabs Peter and blows a raspberry under his chin. "You're the fruit, baby boy. I'm the fruit fly that buzzes all around you, addicted to your sweet juices. But then, you're also the wicked spider that trapped this poor fruit fly in his wicked, wicked web. The double-you, double-you, double-you." He lowers his voice to a suggestive rumble. "We are o _n-line_ tonight."

"Flash used to call me a fruitcake," Peter reminisces. He's not sure why it seems funny now. It wasn't then. It still shouldn't be. It just is.

"Because you were sweet and he wanted to eat you?" Wade suggests, leering and squeezing harder.

Peter chuckles. "I doubt it."

Flash is a chapter of Peter's life that he doesn't revisit in the spirit of _living well being the best revenge_. He's met far too many people incomparably worse, so giving this angsty teenage memory any power would be ridiculous. Or, so he tries to convince himself. But – _fruitcake_.

He snorts. It really is funny.

Wade doesn't release his hold on Peter; instead he hoists Peter up and carries him over to Aunt May's living room, where he lets himself fall backwards onto a couch, grunting under Peter's weight.

The smell of burnt stuff (wires and plastic isolation and aluminum and paper and the soup itself) has spread this far already. Peter relinquishes the hope that they could hide what happened before his Aunt comes home.

Eh, more time to snuggle… before Aunt May takes them to task for the mess.

"I wanted to do something nice for you, cuddle-arachnid," Wade says quietly after a while, sending Peter's recently calmed heart for another race.

Them's fighting words.

"Nicer than a stroll along the stinky moonlit beach full of bottle shards and beer cans. Nicer than a dinner at a taco stand, too-"

"No such thing," Peter protests near-unintelligibly, because he can't be bothered to raise his head, and his face is smooshed in Wade's shoulder.

"-and I know you're sick of pancakes."

"Ain't," Peter mumbles into Wade's t-shirt. "That was one time, 'cause I ate, like, thirteen of them, but I _like_ them, okay?" And he was distracted. He was cramming. He doesn't remember to eat when he crams unless someone puts food under his nose, in which case he eats automatically. Wade figured that out, and he kept bringing pancakes, which Peter kept eating on reflex, until at some point Peter just turned away from his desk and vomited all over his ratty carpet.

Wade knows to stop at ten pancakes now. Peter's trying to argue him down to eight, but so far Wade's being a Jewish grandmother about it.

"Don't butter me up," Wade grumbles. " _I_ am buttering _you_ up."

Peter's spider senses tingle. He finally lifts his head and squints at the line of his boyfriend's jaw. " _Why_ are you buttering me up?"

"Aside from the obvious-" Wade squeezes Peter's butt, which, yes, _obviously_ , "-thing is, baby boy, compared to what it's like when you're looking for someone you could love, working on a relationship is a lot less adventurous."

 _Boring_. Is Peter boring? He has superherodom working for him, but, oddly, when he looks at himself from a neutral viewpoint, he has to admit that he is a pretty boring person.

Darn.

"So, I started thinking, and there's something I've got to tell you."

If Peter was a sensitive person, or if he didn't know Wade so well, he might have burst into tears at this point. Fortunately, Peter is pretty savvy when it comes to his boyfriend _and_ to the many ways of experiencing a critical failure at human interactions (he is, after all, a nerd wrapped in spandex), so he doesn't panic.

He lifts himself on his arms and catalogues how Wade's looking at him – facial expression partly obscured by prominent scarring, but not entirely inscrutable – the way he fidgets a little, how he absently plays with the hem of his fraying Power Rangers hoodie.

"Wade," he says, coming across more exasperated than nervous, which is okay but not ideal. He disentangles himself and stands up. "Stop, rewind and, unless you mean to break up with me, start with something that doesn't sound like a break-up speech."

There is still a tiny chance Wade's trying to leave him, but if so, then it's clearly happening unwillingly, 'for Peter's own good' or some such nonsense, and under duress. In which case Peter needs to know whom he is going to hunt down and suspend from the roof of the entrance portico of the Public Library wearing only their skivvies.

"Don't leave me! I'll die!" Wade throws himself to the ground at Peter's feet and hugs him around the knees. "Granted, it won't take – but, really, just please don't leave me, baby boy. I love you. Like all lovesongs put together. Even the Axis of Awesome Lovesong. _Funny_ ," he adds in a little plaintive voice that sounds a bit like he might be able to laugh again, one day, once years have passed. " _Please_?"

"Alright." Deep breaths, Peter tells himself. He scraps the half-formed plans for revenge and concentrates on the situation at hand. "So, you don't want to break up. That's good." He pats the top of Wade's head.

Wade briefly nuzzles Peter's thigh and then climbs up to his feet, using Peter as a ladder.

"Uh-uh. And, contrary to all the tropes about how guys fuck up and end up sounding like they want to break up all over the fandom, thing is, I wasn't trying to ask you to marry me, either. What? Yeah." He looks up, eyes wide. "They're right, Petey! It sounds- not _nice_. It sounds really specta-fucking-cular. Marry me? Wait- Okay, fine, I won't do it like this. Let's _adjourn_!" Wade tries to mentally backtrack, and then notices the expression on Peter's face. "Uh, Petey-boy?"

Peter does his best to willfully induce amnesia in himself. When that doesn't work he tries to do it like Sherlock and delete, but apparently his brain is a contrary mushroom and refuses to cooperate. He takes a deep breath, then decides that he isn't getting paid enough for this, spins on his heel and walks out of the house, leaving his boyfriend to try and tidy up his own mess.

Peter isn't really scared of the consequences of his little breakdown; as he crosses the street he takes a moment to remind himself how much he appreciates Wade's weird, back-handed steadiness. One of the things which he loves about Wade is his reliability. Peter turning away from him and getting a little alone time, without offering explanations, in fact without saying anything at all, won't hurt or anger Wade.

It will maybe give him a pause; if Wade genuinely is rattled, he will seek out a friend and ask for advice.

Then he will come find Peter, and Peter will be ready to listen.

x

Wade finds Peter on the next day in Peter's apartment.

Peter hears him picking the lock. Wade has a key, but apparently using it would – quote – detract from the romance – unquote.

Peter blames this notion entirely on the Golden Girls. Wade has a special place in his heart for Bea Arthur, and Peter's made it a point to get acquainted with the show in effort to understand. He won't ever reach that level of zealotry about it, but he fully agrees that Bea was _one damn classy lady_.

"Tell me you're bringing take-out!" Peter calls out. He turns over on the bed, snags the first piece of paper (which just happens to be the post-it with his assigned lab-times for Structural Proteomics) and places it between the pages of his textbook instead of a mark.

"I got tacos!" Wade replies from the doorway, for once dressed in his civvies. "But it was a long journey of discovery and I needed the strength."

Peter ignores the crumpled oily wrapping paper that Wade delivers straight into the bin with a lackadaisical over-the-shoulder throw (without watching where he's aiming). He's more interested in the unicorn plushy the man is holding under his arm.

"You said no to flowers. But who doesn't dig unicorns? They're horny – just like us!" Wade grins and pushes the absurd toy into Peter's arms.

Peter takes it, because at this point there's not much else he can do. Wade's grin disappears almost instantly, and in the shadow it's really hard to read his face under the shifting scar-tissue, so Peter searches for clues in body language.

Wade looks like someone kicked him.

"It's soft," Peter concedes. The unicorn may be huggable, even, but that's a word he's not comfortable using. He sets the toy onto the corner of the mattress and turns back to his boyfriend. "So, you wanted to tell me something."

"I think…" Wade says. The hesitation and the tone of his voice are enough to set off alarm bells in Peter's head; he already knows he won't like what's going to come out of Wade's mouth. "…you should move into the Tower. Just for now."

Peter repositions himself on the bed, knees and elbows shifting without bumping into anything, with far more limberness than he ever could have expected of himself growing up. Wade follows his every motion, and for all that there is a glimmer of lust in his expression, it disappears so very quickly under the weight of concern.

Worry is unsexy.

Peter sits with his legs under him, which isn't the most conductive position when it comes to conducting an argument, but he's not sure how hard he should be arguing right now. If at all.

No, wait. He's definitely arguing.

Not about moving to the Tower, however.

"I will," he says, and then waits for Wade to register that he has won without a fight and waver between relief and suspicion (it was too easy, and he does know Peter fairly well), before he adds: "As long as you go with me."

Wade slumps. It doesn't seem theatrical enough to him, apparently, because he then lets himself sink to his knees at the foot of Peter's bed and thumps his fist against his chest, like that hit him right in the heart.

Peter would smile, if the discussion wasn't so serious.

"You know he can't unalive _me_ , Petey," Wade more or less purrs, rubbing his cheek against Peter's bare knee. "I'm the original comeback boy. Or, not original. Wolvie is the original. But I'm the upgraded version. Mark Two."

Peter sighs and softly strokes the top of Wade's head, fingers moving along the ridges and smooth plains of scars, and he closes his eyes before he says: "Sure. But that doesn't mean you can swaddle me up in bubble wrap and lock me away in a tower. I'm not a princess-"

"Are too. Princess Pete. Like Princess Peach, only so, so much hotter."

"-and unless you're the guardian dragon in this scenario, I'm not doing it."

Peter takes a moment to review what has just come out of his brain, and then shrugs it away. Sure, a year ago he would have had something snippy to say about the relative sanity level of anyone who let anything like that past their vocal chords, but that was because he had been young and… okay, not exactly stupid, but pretty ignorant.

When he opens his eyes, Wade is staring up at him like he's fallen in love all over again (and Peter's heart is welcome to stop making so much racket, alright? he's perfectly aware it's there and hard at work). "I'm always gonna be your dragon, Prince Pete."

There's a tense moment that thickens until its consistency reaches approximately maple syrup, but about three seconds before Peter pulls Wade on top of him and hugs him with his legs and demands sweet, sweet love be made to him, Wade jumps to his feet.

"Spades!"

Peter blinks. He mentally flips through his rolodex of possible contexts – cards, Sam, cornucopia, could that be a riff on 'Spidey'? (nah) – and comes up empty. Situation normal.

Wade dives head-first into the closet. His voice is muffled, but for a given value of sense his explanation does make it: "Gotta dig the moat, Sugar Spidey! Every princess locked in the highest tower in a castle guarded by a dragon needs a moat!" He backs out the closet, wearing only his red-and-black mask and a bright green thong. "I've seen Shrek! Shrek knows best!"

He may or may not be gesturing toward his crotch at this point, and Peter may or may not be wondering just who or what is the 'Shrek' in this scenario.

Considering Tony's propensity for shapeist nicknames, he resolves to never ever mention this moment to Bruce.

x

Wade and Peter turn up in the lobby of the Stark Tower; before they reach the lift they run into Tony and Pepper, who are moving at a dignified yet quick pace in the opposite direction.

The two couples stop, vis-à-vis one another.

Pepper is frantically typing something on her phone.

Tony is staring at Deadpool and Spider-Man in full regalia, each with a spade over his shoulder (looking exactly like a pair of murderers back from burying their latest victim in a shallow grave). Tony sticks up a finger. "I know there's a story behind this and I'm trying really hard to decide if I want to ask-"

Then he slides away, pulled along by Pepper's grip on the collar of his jacket.

"It's a really difficult decision, Pep!" he protests.

"Board meeting, Tony," Pepper replies, at the same time adamant and making it clear that she doesn't have time for this, goshdarnit, and Tony should just get a move on.

"Exactly!" exclaims the poor multibillionaire. "Can I skip this one if I promise to be twice as _bored_ next time?"

Peter doesn't hear the response, because by that time the bosses have reached the street, but he can extrapolate. Pepper's not the type to back down, and it sounded like a really old and oft-repeated argument anyway.

Peter waves at the receptionists as he and Wade pass the counter.

One of the younger ladies behind it waves back, and then points at the elevator.

Whoa, _speedy boarding_!

The elevator door closes behind them with a cheerful _ding_ – blessedly, there is no music involved.

"Hey, baby boy, no raining on your parade here, but is it really okay for me to be in this swanky place? Usually I wouldn't care, but if you get into trouble I might end up blue-balled, and-"

Peter cuts him off: "I did say _mi casa es tu casa_ -"

"No, you didn't-"

"Yes, I did-"

"No-"

"Yes-"

"When?" Wade thumps the spade against the badly abused carpet under their feet – fortunately using the shaft end. "Ha!"

Peter raises his eyebrows. He clearly remembers the occasion. They had had a discussion about Spanish phrases used in English without people knowing what they even meant, which somehow ended in a competition of who could translate more entries on the Chinese take-out menu. "That time Al had a date-"

"Oh fuck." Wade dramatically facepalms, and brains himself with the sharp part of the spade – but only a little. "I managed to repress that night. I came home and they… they…"

"You never actually told me what happened." Peter is a little masochistically curious, because if it was the usual situation, Wade would have just cheered Al on and possibly offered running commentary, but more likely just gone to find something to occupy his time (read 'Peter').

"Bumblebee, I can't!" Wade cries. "It will warp your brain-"

"Sirs," JARVIS interrupts in a voice that somehow manages to be both robotic (the A.I. plays pretend at the lower levels of the Tower, for his own safety) and long-suffering. "May I be of service?"

It hits Peter that they have managed to annoy an extremely polite _artificial intelligence_ that dealt with _Tony Stark_ approximately _twenty-four seven_ into getting _impatient and shirty_ with them. They probably deserve medals. Or should be quarantined for the safety of the mankind. He's not sure. But, at least, lately he's not asking these questions of himself daily, and J.J.'s angry rants about the evilness of Spider-Man only make him think about kebap.

He's not sure why. It just happens. Every. Single. Ti-

"Mr Spider-Man?" JARVIS says, exasperation replaced with a hint of worry.

Peter knows what it looks like when Wade talks to the boxes, and it's not the sanest thing, but the fact is that other people at least know he's in the middle of a thinking process. When you do that kind of thing internally – like the psychiatrists tell you you should – it just confuses everyone.

"Can Deadpool come up with me?" Peter asks, and it's not hard; he doesn't understand why it took him so long to get to the point. "As my guest, I mean?"

JARVIS makes a pause that, in a human butler, would be used to forcefully suppress a huff. "As you wish, Mr Spider-Man. Mr Wilson is not on the list of banned entrances, and you have been granted the prerogative of entertaining guests as long as-"

"Water Truce!" Wade exclaims happily. "Got it, Bagheera. So long as Kaa keeps her forked tongue to herself, me and Mowgli here play nice."

Peter, frankly, is more scared of the teeth, although it is probably true that the Black Widow can do more damage by saying or not saying something than with sharp weapons. Though… no, really, it's a toss-up.

"Then up to the penthouse, please, Jarvis," Peter says and, with some reluctance, the elevator begins its journey upwards.

"Belay that, Pink Pather!" Wade exclaims, and the elevator comes to a rapid halt that makes Peter's ears pop. "Let's go straight to my spider-love-monkey's jungle gym!"

"What for?" Peter inquires. "It's not like my rooms are different from any other rooms in the Tower. They're _only a little more_ lavish than the Ty Warner suite at the Four Seasons."

"I think I once unalived someone that stayed there," Wade muses, occupied with pressing all floor buttons from underground garages to the penthouse. "Did they have paisley upholstery? The blood prob'ly wouldn't have come out, so I guess I did humanity two services that day. _Paisley_ , baby boy. Speaking of upholstery, your room? I could fuck you right here – _ambience!_ – but the spades might get in the way."

The elevator moves again.

Much to Peter's relief, it doesn't stop at each one of the eighty-something floors on their way.

He wishes he could give JARVIS a thank-you present to show his appreciation, but what can you even get an A.I.?

x

Peter is pleasantly wrung out after his recent _vigorous physical activity_ ; his aches are slowly disappearing under the assault of his healing factor, and he's feeling like a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce on top is all that is missing from his world.

Wade puts said bowl into his hand, plops down onto the couch and cuddles up to his side, like they're this stereotypical couple form a TV show. Peter loves every second of it. He gives a moment to the thought that he's not sure if he's disappointed or relieved that Wade doesn't mention the white box' idea from the other day anymore, and then leaves it be. Obviously, they've dealt with it by forgetting about it.

He's down with this solution.

x

The Avengers come back from their mysterious probably-Hydra-related assignment (Peter thinks they should just admit they're trying and failing to hunt down the Winter Soldier, who seemed to try and fail to kill Captain America, but maybe that's a little too much trying and failing in between a superhero team and a supervillain assassin, and the PR team told Tony to just keep mum…).

Peter is in the communal living room, working on a study proposal for his Cancerous Cells semestral project, peripherally aware of Wade dancing around the kitchen to a Daft Punk song and working on a huge stack of pancakes.

Peter's listening to Bronski Beat, and the headphones block out most of the sounds, so he's alerted to the incoming by the momentary stillness of his boyfriend.

The spider senses do not tingle, so he's not actually panicked. He pauses the track, takes off the headphones and pulls his mask on. Then he turns around.

The Avengers are back, it seems. A quick check of facial expressions shows that their errand wasn't successful, but they don't look as grim as if there were any major injuries, so he just shrugs it off.

Bruce plops down onto the couch next to Peter, leans back, covers his face with his forearm and says: "Tony, if you bring me coffee, I'll delete the recording I made of your babble-rant on the quinjet before Steve has a chance to hear it."

"Square deal," Tony yelps and hurries for the kitchen-

"What rant?" Steve demands.

-where he's not too surprised to encounter the relatively civilian incarnation of Deadpool (Wade has put his mask on as well, probably unnerved by so many people suddenly inside what up to now was his space), but seems thrown by the resident amount of pancakes. Which is a little weird, because the penthouse is saturated with the smell of pancakes. The actual presence of pancakes should have been expected.

Especially if one was a genius.

"Something about how to bait a superior mouse-trap, and the tendency of scientists to use rodents for their experiments," Natasha tells Steve enigmatically. "He did not outright call _you_ a lab-rat, though. _This time_."

Peter's half-convinced the woman is trolling Captain America, because that response was void of answers and absolutely provoking new questions. Hawkeye shoots past to the kitchen, helps himself to a pancake without even washing his hands, and then goes to root through the fridge for… milk? Milk. Thor is still absent. Instead of him, there is one of the new guys – as in, newer than Peter himself (although, as opposed to Peter, who is still tolerated rather than welcome, this is actually a _full_ -Avenger).

"Brother!" Wade yells, dodges past Tony and Steve, and throws himself around Falcon's neck.

Falcon freezes and – credit where credit is due – holds still through the entire production, until Wade gets his hugging fix and lets go, bouncing on his toes.

Peter flips over the back of the couch and stands guard behind his boyfriend, just in case anyone not used to that much exuberance gets trigger happy. Better if there is no call for a cleaning service, right? Then he lets himself be filled with warmth from watching Wade be happy. It's so rare in their lives that he knows to appreciate it.

The coffee machine gurgles.

"I owe Nick another tenner," Steve grumbles under his breath.

Natasha re-sheathes a couple of knives. Peter is quietly grateful for her restraint – pulling those out of Wade's kidneys would have put a damper on his day.

"So," Wade says to Falcon, who is looking a little shell-shocked (although, to be fair, that is a pretty normal reaction to Deadpool), "I think we're twins."

Falcon thinks about this. And then he inquires, in that carefully calm voice that hints on an impending blow-up: "What. The Hell."

Wade clasps his hands together in front of his chest and bows ever so slightly, mimicking the Japanese gesture. "Please, don't reject me? I've lost all my family a long time ago and – and they were… not very nice people. My Dad hit me. Sometimes with a bottle. A broken bottle. Hey, you wanna know how I got these scars-?" He lifts his mask just enough to show off his chin and give Falcon a fair idea of what the rest of his face looks like.

The contingent of the Avengers watch the show, by now reassured enough that no one seems like they're about to attack Wade with anything sharp or otherwise painful. Tony sits in the remaining free place on the couch on Bruce's other side, passes one of the mugs in his possession to Bruce, and mutters something about a dreary lack of popcorn.

Falcon grimaces in genuine empathy. "Shit, man."

"That explains a lot," Tony agrees, as if he's never seen Wade's face before.

It seems odd to Peter that the face wouldn't have come up during the frankly concerning amount of time Tony spent on Deadpool's background checks.

"I know," Wade tells Falcon. "But, see, the one thing I've got from Dad, which I still keep, is this name." He shows off a battered old high-school library card. Wade wears braces in that photo. It's a funny-embarrassing kind of a childhood photo, until you realize that the little boy in that picture is the same person as the horribly scarred man showing the picture to you. Then it's just horrific. "Look, here. See? Wade _Wilson_. We're _family_."

"I'm black," Falcon points out intelligently.

Wade pockets his old, old library card in his tan cargo pants, shrugs and throws his hands wide. "Bro, I'm a huge mass of walking scar tissue. Am I not black enough for _my family_? Are you being racist or ableist right now, 'cause I honestly can't tell. I'm _so_ disappointed!"

Peter lets himself be conned into folding Wade into a protective embrace. He sympathizes with Falcon, but so far this has been fun, and he wants to see where it will go.

Sam Wilson – the certified counselor at the VA – blinks, and cuts off the introspection as fast as he can. You can't argue with a madman. Or, rather, you can, but the madman will always win.

"Why," he asks helplessly, already knowing the reply wouldn't in any way help him answer his questions, "are you convinced I'm your brother?"

Wade shrugs, as if the answer should have been obvious. "We share the _surname_."

Falcon looks like he's trying to feel some gratification over being right about the unhelpfulness of Deadpool's response – and failing. "Do you know how many Wilsons there are in the U.S. alone?"

Wade pauses and seriously reflects. Then he shakes his head. "No. Do you?"

There would have been silence in the wake of the question, if not for Tony's snickers. Bruce seems to be sipping his coffee with all the serenity in the world, but the tightness around the corners of his eyes shows that he's actually grinning behind the cover of his mug.

Natasha has put the kettle on, and it's just beginning to make its burbling noise, while she rifles through the shelves for the exact kind of tea she's in the mood for. Wade hasn't rearranged those, Peter doesn't think, so he's probably not in danger of being gutted for de-alphabetization or anything of the sort.

"I just know," Wade explains seriously, "that a relative of ours from Cardiff went down to London wearing all hot pink and murder-suicide'd as a plot point for BBC Sherlock. Jenny. _From the block_. But I know _she ain't my mama_ -"

"That was a crime against feminism," Peter grumbles.

"No argument from this corner, baby boy. It was so bad she stopped being hot, and that's saying something – _ain't it funny_?"

"Besides," Clint mutters, half-hiding behind his plate stacked with pancakes, " _love don't cost a thing_ , do it?"

" _Mne stydno znat' tebya_ ," comments Agent Romanov, nudging his ribs. And accepting another plate of pancakes from him, as if it was her due.

Wade just goes back, surprised that Clint rescued the pancake that would have burned while Wade greeted his potential long-lost sibling, and slides right back into the flow of pouring and flipping and stacking.

Peter returns just in time to rescue his laptop from being usurped by the two resident superscientists.

x

The Avengers don't go out of town again.

Hydra proves that they know the adage about Muhammad and the mountain by coming to New York.

Peter remembers the last time Hydra operated on his turf, and he's not staying out of this, come Hell or high water or the Black Widow herself.

x

Peter's phone trills out the beginning of Queen's _Miracle_.

Peter is a little preoccupied out here, and he needs both hands to move and fight. On the other hand, his webbing is one of the best adhesives known to humankind (for a couple of hours after depressurization, that is).

He mentally apologizes to his phone, squirts the tiniest blobs he can onto the screen, picks up, and attaches the phone to the side of his mask.

Handsfree!

"Hi, Aunt May."

"Peter, dear," Aunt May says in the voice that immediately has Peter on alert. "I know that Wade is a little unusual-"

That is the single most diplomatic wording that has ever been applied to Deadpool, he's sure.

"-but that does not exempt him from taking responsibility when he messes up. Next time, he will go to the store and replace the microwave himself."

Peter evades a hail of bullets, sticks a thread to the underside of a convenient fire escape and swings around to get some solid building between himself and the clodpoles with the automatics. Once he's reasonably safe, he sighs.

He should have known that Wade would bail.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Ma-"

"No, don't worry about it," she assures him. "I know he's just embarrassed. I would be, too, if _I_ put a tin into the microwave. And what's that noise?"

"Err…" Peter hesitates. She knows what he does in his free time, but in between the Daily Bugle and his anecdotes, Aunt May may be under the not entirely correct impression that he's mostly helping out the fire-fighters and arresting car-jackers. "Hawkeye and Iron Man are playing a computer game." This explanation is even plausible, in that it happens often enough, and he's already mentioned it to his Aunt before. "Mr Stark's system is unreal-"

"Boys," she huffs, more amused than truly exasperated. "They're the same at every age."

Peter hangs upside down and webs two of the enemy guys in their faces.

They rest are fast enough to locate him and shoot before he moves – he's fast enough to move before he's shot. Barely.

"Now that sounds like a fairly intense game." Aunt May chuckles.

"Yes," Peter replies helplessly. "I guess you could say that. They're both really competitive."

The remnants of the assault squad round the corner, and Peter get's one more down – misses the second man – before he's forced to retreat round the edge of the roof.

"I'll leave you _boys_ to your fun," says Aunt May. "You just tell Wade to come by and pick up his change. A new microwave does not cost ten thousand dollars."

"I'll tell him that. But, you know how he is. He won't take the money back." Peter is hundred percent certain of it. Wade adores Aunt May. He would buy her a pony if she wanted one. Or a yacht. Or a private island.

Ten thousand dollars will get absorbed into her budget easily. Some medicine here, a handful of new items there, maybe some minor maintenance on the house. Soon enough it will be gone.

"He is welcome to try and convince me to accept it," the woman says primly.

Wade is a metahuman mercenary with an insanely intimidating kill-list, but Peter still wouldn't bet on him in that confrontation.

"Bye, Aunt May," he says for lack of anything more perspicacious to say.

"Bye, Peter, dear. Call me when you're safe."

She hangs up, and Peter resigns himself for the umpteenth time to the fact that whenever he tries to lie to his Aunt he makes an idiot of himself. He's not sure why he keeps trying.

Then, suddenly, there is a quinjet above him.

His phone rings again.

Fortunately, his mask has enough yield that he manages to accept the call despite the phone being stuck to it. He has to do it blindly and at an awkward angle, but math has never been a problem for him.

"Good morning, Grandma," Stark greets. "Been too busy to talk to your teammates?"

'My Aunt called' is on the tip of Peter's tongue. It would have been a decent retort, too – aunts, like any female relatives, are a universal excuse. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't want anyone to know that the Spider-Man has an aunt.

"I tried to get away for a breather, but these guys just won't take no for an answer," he says instead. It's uninspired. But safe.

Stark scoffs. "Widow on your six."

Peter reflexively turns – and reflexively catches. When he opens his palm, there's a commlink in it.

Luckily, he has two ears. Affixing it isn't much more complicated than accepting a call despite the adherent state of his touchscreen, so by the time Stark hangs up he's already patched into the Avengers' frequency.

"Hi, everyone," Peter says. "Thanks for coming to the party. Beer's run out, but we've got live music-"

A salvo sounds from the street, punctuated with the ringing of shattered windowpanes.

"A little heavy on the percussions, eye-em-age-oh, but the band call themselves _Hydra_ , and isn't that just rad?"

He's treated to the unique sound of Captain America swearing like a sailor. He blushes under his mask.

"I've got three more assault squads," reports Iron Man. "Transmitting location."

Peter's phone is stuck to his head, so he can't check. He prudently decides to stay with his group – he's formed a bit of an emotional attachment to them by now, anyway.

The battle moves through the streets. One by one the Hydra flunkies go down – some webbed, some Widow-bit. In between them, the two spider-themed guys deal with the threat easily.

Natasha transmits the location of the neutralized enemy agents to SHIELD.

"Gold star for Spidey!" Wade exclaims through the comms.

Peter grins. He doesn't doubt that Wade has managed to join in despite never being issued an official commlink of his own. He's resourceful like that.

"Hi, honey," says Peter. "I might be late for dinner-"

Natasha glomps onto Peter's neck – scaring the snot out of him – and directs him to take her up to a nearby rooftop.

Rooftops, as it turns out, are also a warzone, because the Hydra folks thought they'd be picked up by choppers…? Peter's on entirely sure on the logic of this plan. It's the Avengers' business, though – he's just here to point and web.

His spider senses tingle.

Peter jumps before he has time to think about it, bodily putting himself in between the danger and Captain America's unprotected back. He catches a blow to the stomach, which throws him back into Steve, who jumps to the side on reflex, and then Peter's crashing into the hard concrete.

"Ow," he rasps, "my elbows." They're going to be bruised. The suit is a write-off, too.

"Babe?" Wade demands.

"I'm fine," Peter assures him, rolling his eyes. He goes to stand.

His hand sort of flops over. His legs don't move at all.

" _Ow_ ," he repeats.

This kind of hurts more than he expected.

"Spider-Man?" Steve's crouching in his line of sight, and his face is all blurry, which is odd, 'cause Peter's got twenty-twenty vision, thank you, radioactive spider. Then Steve peers over the top of the shield he's holding to shield both himself and Peter and shouts: "He's hit!"

Peter would huff at the drama, but any motion of his abdominal muscles results in agony, so he tries to lie still and relax. And breathe. That's a chore of its own. But he'll be fine – he got smashed worse last week – face-first into a wall. That sucked. He actually spat a tooth afterwards.

There's a video on YouTube.

"Petey…" Wade says in a really, really weird voice, crouching down next to Captain America without a single compliment to the man's truly amazing physique. His hands touch Peter's belly and side, and Peter can't really sit up now, but at least he manages to figure out – finally – why things are so weird.

He's been shot.

"You're kind of leaking out too much, babe," Wade admonishes. "Stop that."

Peter's completely aboard that train. Or he would be, if he could. "Uhh… sorry?"

Wade sniffles. He's sad, sure, but weirdly not angry. Peter's never heard him sound so scared.

"I mean it, smarty-pants. Stop that bleeding _now_."

Why is everything going dark? "I- hmm. Uh. I'm-"

 _Sorry_.

x

When Peter wakes up, there's a huge, solemn face right in front of him.

He freaks out, sending all the beeping and blinking machines into frenzy, but the face doesn't move. It just stares at him with big, black eyes set around a soft pink horn.

"Peter?"

The unicorn disappears, and out of the hazy background – that is likely owed to some heavy duty narcotics – appears the face of Dr Bruce Banner. There's something wrong with this situation. If Peter only were a little less stoned, he'd figure out what it is.

"Can you understand me?" asks Dr Banner, mildly concerned.

"Mnnnyup," Peter manages. He probably shouldn't be so intensely proud of himself for that feat of diction.

"Great." Dr Banner smiles a little, and pats Peter's shoulder. "You're going to be just fine – perk of your healing factor. If you didn't have that, you'd be in an ICU."

"Mnnnot eyesyuuu?" Peter inquires, squinting and trying to see further than the four feet he's managed so far. He's sluggish, but it's probably okay, because his spider senses are quiet. There's no immediate danger here.

"No," Dr Banner assures him. "You're in the Stark Tower. We have our own medical facility. Don't worry. Try to sleep, if you can manage it. Do you want the unicorn back?"

"Mnnnooo…" Peter refuses, grimacing.

His attending physician chuckles. "Yes, I suspected. But Deadpool insisted that you wouldn't be able to sleep without it…"

Peter drops off with a smile.

x

When Peter wakes up again, he doesn't feel like he's going to lose a couple of internal organs via a hole in his stomach. He also doesn't feel like he's swimming through foggy blurriness, and with the perception of reality comes a moment of panic.

The machine beeps like mad.

Dr Banner appears fast, although by the time he's in the room Peter's taken off the sensor. This has stopped the beeping, with an unhappy side-effect of it being replaced by a long, flat tone. Anyone who's ever watched a hospital drama knows that means that the patient is kaput.

Peter feels a little guilty when he sees the expression on Dr Banner's face; the doctor appears relieved almost immediately upon entering the room, but for a while there Peter's scared his favorite Avenger pretty badly.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Dr Banner shakes his head. One of his hands runs through his slightly overgrown curls, the other deposits a phone in the backpocket of his pants. "I should just be used to this. Between Clint and Tony- don't even _think_ of getting up."

Peter knows better than to protest that he's fine. He's not fine. He's a lot better than he was, but the erstwhile yawning chasm in his midsection still feels raw and fragile, and his head hates him. He suspects this is what a hangover feels like. It's unfair. He should have had the chance to enjoy being drunk if he has to suffer the consequences.

He tacitly accepts a plastic cup and drinks. The tepid water feels like balm on his throat.

"Is Wade 'round?" Peter inquires. That seems pressing. He knows better than to ask if the man is 'okay' – by various definitions of the word Wade is always and never okay – but his absence is conspicuous and worrying.

"I had to kick him out," Dr Banner admits, consulting the terminal about Peter's vital signs and whatever else they were monitoring. The screen is conveniently positioned so that Peter would have to get out of the bed to look at it, and aside from being unwilling to risk Dr Banner's wrath, he also doubts he would glean anything useful from the readings. "He was driving me up the wall and… well, you know I can't risk releasing the other guy in a place like this."

Peter understands. Though he still doesn't like this. Getting shot sucks.

"How did you sell him on that?" Peter inquires. Negotiating with Wade is no small feat. Dr Banner is a genius, so him managing isn't a great surprise, but Peter's all the more curious about the details.

"Traded my promise that no one would take any blood samples from you."

Peter pales. That should have occurred to him. If only his head stopped aching and he would have the chance to think clearly for a minute-

"Are you okay?" Dr Banner asks, putting his hand on Peter's shoulder. "Peter?"

He stops breathing for a moment. His heart skips a beat. He should have known! He should have figured it out! He knew something was off – I he had just _thought_ -

"Peter, calm down, please." Dr Banner looks ready to pull out a sedative.

Peter tries to get a hold of himself. It's too late – he can't prevent this disaster anymore. He can only, maybe, do some damage control. He needs Wade. He's not sure why, possibly just to hold his hand, but he does.

"You know who I am," he says desolately.

Dr Banner raises his hands palms-out and shakes his head. "No, no. That's what Deadpool called you after you were shot. I assumed, and then you responded to it."

"I'm not wearing a mask," Peter points out.

"I haven't let anyone in here since I took it off," explains the doctor.

It sounds nice, it really does, but Peter hasn't survived this long by being naïve. "Security cameras." He may have been parading around Stark Tower without a mask before, but that was when the Avengers weren't there, and he believed he could rely on his gentlemen's agreement with JARVIS. A direct order from Tony would trump any feelings of sympathy on the A.I.'s part.

"I have a privacy lock on this room. Obviously, Jarvis knows who you are, but I rather suspect that he has known for quite some time already. And he won't tell anyone – not even Tony, unless you constitute a threat to us."

"Unlikely," Peter replies morosely. He doesn't believe all this, but he's smart enough to admit that he doesn't have a choice. Besides, he has already considered revealing his identity to the Avengers. This has simply forced his hand.

That's the downside of having allies who take care of him after he gets shot. He may have come out ahead, after all.

He composes himself as best as he can, prone in a hospital bed, wearing a t-shirt that he definitely hasn't put on himself, and extends his hand. "Hi, Doctor. I'm Peter."

Dr Banner is a good sport about shaking. He smiles as he replies: "Hello, Peter. I am Bruce."

"Thanks for patching me up, Bruce."

"My pleasure," the man replies easily, "although I'd prefer it if you didn't get shot in the first place."

Peter shrugs. The motion pulls and there's some sting, but no agony. Score!

"No promises. These guys keep bringing guns to a web-fight."

It's a terrible line, and the frown Bruce turns in Peter's direction is so pained that it's all Peter can do to keep from laughing. His diaphragm and surrounding muscles are definitely not up to any laughing yet.

So it's more than a little masochistic of him to ask for Wade.

Bruce looks like he's judging Peter only for a couple of seconds, before self-awareness kicks in and he nods, walking off as if the path to the door were the stairs up to gallows. He pauses just before the threshold and turns back.

"Could you tell me… if you don't mind… _why the unicorn_?"

Peter was right. Laughing _hurts_.

x

Bruce doesn't find Wade.

He does find Wade's Wade plushy sitting in a chair in the corridor, with a message safety-pinned to its head, and holding Peter's cell phone. The message reads 'off to feed the ducks/ back before pumpkin-time' which may be Halloween, but most likely means midnight, because in his soul Wade _is_ a Disney princess.

Peter braces himself and makes a call.

"H-hello?"

"Hi, Aunt May," he says, trying at once to sound fine like nothing serious happened and not sound too happy, because he doesn't want her to think he would let her worry about him… he's pretty sure he fails on all accounts.

"Peter?" she inquires through a stuffed nose.

Peter feels like the lowest heel that had ever been underfoot. He's made her cry. He deserves to be fed nothing but soy beans and fish oil and to be forced to watch the entirety of The Kardashians.

"I'm sorry," he says. It's inadequate – if only because he can't think of a stronger word right now – but it's the best he can do. "I'm okay. I mean, I'm going to be okay. I got a bit hurt – but, hey, I saved Captain America…?"

"Oh…"

He's not sure what 'oh' means. He's not feeling especially proud or deserving for taking a bullet for Captain Rogers. He doesn't think it grants him any special lenience. He's only put it out there because… it maybe, a little bit, helps provide some perspective.

Most of what he does lately – aside from uni – is a matter of self-sacrifice. He knows Aunt May doesn't want this for him, and knows that she accepts it as a part of him, no matter how much it scares her. He just can't seem to figure out a way out of this conundrum.

"Is Wade there?" Aunt May asks, surprising Peter.

"Uh… he's around here somewhere. Bruce has gone to find him." Or, rather, to let the other Avengers know they have lost him. "Should I-"

"No, no. He'll take care of you, I'm sure." And she does sound sure. She sounds like relying on Wade is the smart choice and she approves, and if Peter could love her more he would. "You will come home the instant they release you, understood?"

"Yes, Aunt May." He nods, even though she can't see him.

"Good, good… Bye, Peter. I love you."

"I love-"

The beeping tone cuts him off.

He feels like the lowest dirt. This is a part of why he wanted to keep Aunt May out of the whole Spider-Man business. He knew she would worry. It's so selfish – but he preferred it when his only concern when injured was how to hide it from her.

x

The mask is returned to Peter's possession, and with a little help from Bruce and Clint he moves from the medical facilities to his designated quarters. He's ordered to rest, with the recommendation of making it bed-rest, and he doesn't actually mind staying put, as long as he can spend the time constructively – doing his schoolwork.

He occasionally glances at the clock. His phone remains silent.

Midnight comes and passes. So does one.

Peter's too tired to continue working, even though he has spent a few days asleep. He wants to wait up, but if Wade doesn't come back within twenty minutes, he's going to find Peter asleep face-down on his keyboard and two hundred pages of 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz' in his text editor.

Peter saves his work and turns off the computer. He lies down. Closes his eyes. JARVIS dims the lights…

…he wakes up some time later to the sound of someone tripping and braining themselves on the frame of the bed.

"Hi, honey," he says without opening his eyes.

Then he opens his eyes.

Wade scrambles up from the floor. He doesn't seem hurt. He comes closer when Peter extends his hand, pulls of his mask and supplies a kiss – and then a few more, to Peter's cheeks and chin and the arch of his collar bone.

Peter sighs; it feels like he's sinking deeper into the bedding, and he would love to sink right back into sleep, but Wade doesn't seem as if he is taking off the suit and joining him, so there's trouble.

"Tell me," he demands – in a sleepy voice that turns the order into a half-intelligible mumble.

"Yeah, he-heh, the thing is… uh… Peter. Petey."

Peter rubs his eyes. He uses his boyfriend to pull himself up into a sitting position (still hurts, but less than before, thank you, radioactive spider!).

"You're freaking me out, Wade. Tell me what's going on, so I can start dealing with it. I've got five stages to go through, this won't be quick _or_ easy-"

"I'm leaving," Wade blurts. "Tomorrow. I'm leaving tomorrow. Not you. But- crap."

"Plushy," Peter orders resolutely, pointing at the toy where he sits guard in the chair.

"Honeybadger-"

"Now," Peter adds, finally feeling the calm of crisis freeze him down inside. It sounds like a paradox, but it really is just a basic prerequisite of herodom – and a bit of learned skill.

Wade seems to telepathically hijack that calm. He pulls open the door, hides behind it, and sticks out his hand holding the Plushypool. "I'm flying out tomorrow, Petey-baby. To some ugly place with lots of drug-runners and no taco stands. Or maybe taco stands after all. Taco stands are getting pretty ubiquitous."

"So…" Peter says slowly, "this is you taking a job and afraid that I'll… what? Tell you not to?"

"Optimism! Smells like Channel Number Five in the early morning, coming out of the wrong bathroom at a crackhouse."

Putting aside the idea of crackhouse bathrooms-

"Wade," Peter sighs.

He has made it a point to think this through before he agreed to a date, and then again when he witnessed Wade slaughtering people, and then yet again when he invited Wade to his apartment for the first time. It's not something you can overlook if you're spending any amount of time in Wade's presence. It's who he is, and he's very… well, the-opposite-of-shy about it. "Will SHIELD come after either of us for this?"

Peter didn't like SHIELD before he became 'the noose around Deadpool's neck', and lately he can't help but be aware that sometimes agents will go tugging at him to get Wade to 'behave'. He's not sure he could deal with it if, in the end, someone used him to strangle his boyfriend. (The only reason he can sleep at all is that Wade would not actually remain dead.)

"If _Mar-ee-yah_ Poppins' word means anything at all – and it better, or I'll go supercalifragilisticexpialidocious on her ass – we're in the clear like a slice of lemon peel floating 'round the glass of James Bond's Vesper Martini. Speaking of love und murder, baby boy. Deal is, I can take a contract on anyone on SHIELD's disposal list; they see it as outsourcing for free, I get paid big green bucks by invested third parties. It's a win-win-win situation – except for the stiffs."

Peter can't quite help it but 'big green' always makes him think of the Hulk, and then his next association is – right to the bottom of the gutter. Darn. How does Wade do these things to him? His brain used to be full of physics and vigilantism, and now he's like an X-tube channel.

It's the thong's fault. Really. It is.

"C'mere and hug me," he grumbles. "You can leave after I fall asleep."

Wade obeys without a word of protest, although there are lots of other words. Despite the temporary clear-headedness caused by a moment of adrenalin surge, Peter is already fading again. This won't take long. Wade's warmth around him is speeding up the process, and the quiet soliloquy on the topic of foreign countries and their customs and their food interspersed with ridiculous and often anatomically impossible declarations of love put a smile on Peter's face as he nods off.


	2. Planting the Shrubbery

Part Two: Planting the Shrubbery

x

The strangest thing about the Winter Soldier is the quiet, but what hits Peter harder is the way everyone's lives seem to twist and center on the man.

If he is a man. Maybe he's some other kind of entity by now. Peter doesn't know and, frankly, he doesn't care. It's official Avengers' business and he's been repeatedly informed, with increasing vehemence, that he should keep his mandibles out of is.

He doesn't have mandibles, but considering that the Black Widow was standing behind Tony and looking too stern for even Peter's most extreme teenage strict librarian fantasies (he's a nerd, it's not like this was in any way out of norm), he's ceased and desisted and left the _real_ superheroes to deal with their convoluted problem that apparently originated during World War Two.

It's a little before Peter's time, anyway.

Or so it seems, until Wade's gone almost twenty-four hours and suddenly there's all sorts of activity in the Tower that very emphatically does _not_ include the Spider-Man.

"That's the thing about manic depression!" Tony expounds, dancing his way across the communal space toward the landing pad. "The way to avoid being depressed is to be manic all the time!"

The quinjet glints in the setting sun, sleek and elegant, ramp lowered as it waits for the rest of its crew.

Natasha glares, gesturing the men to hurry up and get in, and disappears inside to start the pre-flight checks.

Clint, in full Hawkeye get-up, slaps Tony's shoulder and chuckles. "So it's either booze or speed for you?" He mock-worriedly shakes his head. "I bet your liver loves you, man."

"It's made of gold-titanium alloy," interjects Colonel Rhodes, who apparently has been invited to the mission on the basis of… _being around_.

No, Peter's not bitter. Well, not much. He's still on sick-leave, and the idea of patrolling makes him want to vomit, so it's not as if he could even make any sort of valid argument for his inclusion.

He's just feeling a little abandoned when the three men laugh and stride off into the sunset together.

Wait, no, he doesn't mean it like _that_ … ugh.

"Hydra again?" Peter inquires of JARVIS once the glass door to the pad is closed. He watches the team file in and the ramp pull up.

"Technically," JARVIS confirms. "The Avengers have been attempting to apprehend the Winter Soldier for the past three months. He is proving to be exceptionally adept at evasion."

Peter nods to himself. Yeah, they don't need him around to muck up their operations. Plus, he's not kidding himself – both Tony and Bruce would be furious if he messed up his education. They're really like ersatz parents, as far as science is concerned.

Very neglectful ersatz parents. Honestly, they're hardly ever around.

Maybe Peter just feels this way because his parents died before he started school?

"They got new leads from the group we fought," Peter deduces. Makes sense. He hopes this works – a depressed Steve is getting the whole team down.

Peter hasn't even _seen Tony_ since Wade made pancakes in the Tower's communal kitchen. Well, until now. If those twenty seconds count.

"In a manner of speaking," JARVIS allows. "The shooter who hit you has been tentatively identified as the Winter Soldier. While SHIELD does not seem to have any leads on his location, Deadpool has apparently somehow managed to track him down. The Avengers are currently tracking Deadpool in the hope of preventing him from – I quote – _filleting Kai's permafrost nads_."

That sounds authentic enough to Peter.

At this point a rational human being would be worried. He isn't – not really. If Wade gets his head blown off, Peter won't have to see it, probably won't even find out about it, unless Wade trips over an unpleasant association while on a completely unrelated mental track.

"Thanks for telling me," Peter says. He appreciates that there is still someone around, and that this person is willing to talk to him.

It makes him feel a little better about being left behind (again) without even a 'see ya'.

x

The next day Peter feels fine to walk – if not actually well enough to swing yet – so he makes the trip to Queens to see Aunt May.

By Subway.

He hasn't quite forgotten what it's like, but the ride (with all the yelling and cussing-riddled prattle, with barely checked aggression that keeps triggering the spider senses, with the stink of a crowd of nervous, sweating people that doesn't entirely cover the fact that someone vomited under the seats last night) still reminds him that he definitely prefers swinging.

The street is the same as ever, with the couple opposite yelling at one another (even though everyone knows by now it's their form of foreplay, and it just makes people uncomfortable to hear) and the dog from two doors down barking at the cat from three doors down, and the kids just getting back from school in the afternoon, chattering interspersed with profanity just to show to their peers how 'cool' they are. The drabness of it all inexplicably cheers Peter up, and although he's not exactly hundred percent fit, he manages a sort of a spring to his step as he walks past the flower beds. He unlocks the door and lets himself in.

Aunt May comes home about an hour and half later, and by that time the take-out Peter ordered has been delivered, plated, and got darn near cold. Luckily, Aunt May has a brand new microwave oven to re-heat it in.

He smiles, thinking of Wade. Obviously, he's transparent as a pane of glass, because Aunt May pauses in sipping her sherry, put her glass aside and her hands on her hips.

"I do hope that Wade knows I am not mad at him?"

Peter shakes his head. "He knows." Or at least, he darn well better should. But even if he doesn't, he's not a coward, and he wouldn't skip out on visiting Aunt May just because he was afraid of getting yelled at.

"He's gone," Peter says, and promptly curses himself from being about as intelligible as the average flat-Earther's Facebook status. "I mean, he's gone out of country, not _gone_ gone. We're okay, I promise, Aunt May. He just – he knows who hurt me. And he doesn't let that sort of thing go."

"Oh." His Aunt reaches for her glass of sherry and, finding it almost empty, refills it. She stares at the sweet poison for a while and then she just says: "Okay."

"Okay?" Peter repeats, slightly discombobulated. That isn't exactly the reaction he has expected. Frankly, he hasn't intended to say so much about Wade's current occupation, but he's stumbled over his own words and, anyway, he knows that every attempt to lie to Aunt May is doomed from the start.

"Yes, Peter," she assures him. "Wade loves you. And being who he is, of course he…" she trails off.

Peter has no idea what she's thinking. She tries so hard to not be judgmental – the acceptance has been doing wonders for Wade – but it is obvious that sometimes she has to try very, very hard.

Aunt May dislikes Spider-Man. She has not been reticent about it until she found out that Peter _was_ Spider-Man, and since then she remains neutral on the subject with the professionalism of a Vulcan. She has strong feelings about vigilantism – and probably a tangle of unresolved issues about murder, even though she has not breathed a word about the topic since Uncle Ben's funeral – and yet she keeps treating Wade with genuine affability.

Maybe it's a family thing. Maybe they get a sort of amnesty in her eyes simply for being loved by her.

Peter hasn't really ever considered what it might be costing her.

He comes back to the present when Aunt May stands and puts her hand on top of Peter's shoulder. "I don't know what I would do if you lost you, Peter," she says.

Peter can't breathe. He looks up, meeting her gaze.

"So if what Wade is doing… if it helps keep you here… keep you al-live…" She pulls her hand away from Peter's collar, presses it to her mouth for a moment – not like a kiss, but to hide the downturn of her lips, as if the horror wasn't clearly visible in her eyes.

She practically runs out of the room.

Peter waits half an hour. When she doesn't come back, he slinks off back to the Stark Tower.

x

School does not stop for any amount of personal crisis, so Peter goes to his lessons and to his labs, turns in assignments done on far too little sleep, and tries to convince himself that burying himself in schoolwork deep enough will keep him from feeling like the lowest heel that has ever disappointed a family member.

He hides behind his computer and his headphones.

The penthouse is unusually quiet.

Then Avengers come back – disappointed, because Wade gave them the slip – and the penthouse is still quiet. Steve seems at least as depressed as Peter, and ten times as listless, seeing as he has no studying to do to keep himself from getting chucked out of Uni. He goes through phases of apathy and pointless frantic motion.

Tony hides in his workshop, venturing outside only when Bruce makes him. In fact, Tony is coming in right now; Bruce follows a step behind him, literally prodding him with something that looks uncannily like a sonic screwdriver.

"I knew this would lure you out of your lair," Clint mutters, putting a tray with a mountainous pile of waffles onto the coffee table.

Natasha follows him, balancing six different dishes on her arms like it's a challenge. She delivers them all unharmed, of course. There's fruit and whipped cream and sugar and syrup-

"I miss Wade," Peter muses.

It doesn't occur to him that he has spoken out loud until Tony shudders and grumbles: "Yeah, that's the part most of us get stuck on."

Peter rolls his eyes, although the effect is lost due to the mirror lenses. Why would they try to understand if they don't have to? They have their legends and their billions of dollars and their fancy intelligence agency at their backs. They have the team, and it looks like they can rely on one another, which, great for them.

Peter knows he's lucky that Tony invited him here where he would be relatively safe, gave him the room and board (and even feeds him without giving it a thought) for free, but none of this makes Peter belong.

He knows where he belongs, and if his romantic relationship looks like an avalanche of suspect humor and Mexican food to the outsiders… he's not going to talk about the pancakes made from scratch or the home-sewn plushy. It's none of the Avengers' business.

"I have a tendency to take myself too seriously," Peter offers instead, dry and just a little mocking (Clint snorts, because _he_ actually _does_ have a sense of humor). "And Wade's this… this _avatar of insouciance_."

"Of insanity, maybe. On account of him being more cuckoo than a Grandfather clock. Loco like O'Neill by the end of Window of Opportunity. Cracked as the eggs Haldir put into these waffles. _Insane_!" Tony dramatically finishes, gesticulating with his fork vehemently enough to assault Bruce with what should have been a mouthful of waffle, cream and blueberries.

This doesn't quite start a foodfight, since the victim isn't Clint (or a real fight, since it's not Natasha either).

Bruce stares at Tony as if he's seeing a really, really black pot getting onto a kettle's case.

Well, Tony still does occasionally have JARVIS play _It's Not Easy Being Green_ , because he has yet to tire of the joke. Bruce doesn't even get exasperated anymore – which suggests that Tony's reached an advanced level of insanity.

Peter shrugs, nabbing a couple of waffles, a scoop of whipped cream and a handful of strawberries. "That's not exactly news. _Everyone_ 's noticed by now. But how does that matter?"

"How- how does- no, kid. Just no."

"He has a point, Tony," Bruce muses. "How has sanity ever helped anything?"

"Deadpool is _whacked_ ," the jittery billionaire philanthropist insists, casting a nervous look at Steve, who is pretending he's somewhere else. "You can't tell me you believe he's mentally stable enough not to happily murder someone in their sleep-"

"It's easier in their sleep than when they're awake," points out the Black Widow.

This takes the wind from Tony's sails. He gapes at the woman for a while, ignoring Clint's snickers. Then he turns to Peter. "At your age, I was getting drunk – sometimes high – and passing out in strange places. Fucking a lot of people I didn't know the first thing about. Designing weapons and selling them to – whoever had the money, I guess."

Peter shakes his head. "I didn't think you were judging me." He honestly hasn't. He is fairly sure that Tony has odd, uncomfortable parental-ish feelings about him, and it's just awkward all around.

"Okay," says Tony. "That's good. 'cause I'm not. I want to, this is really hard, but I'm trying here."

Steve finally admits that he's present, and sighs. "Tony, could you for a minute stop making this be about you?"

Tony rounds at him, spreads his arms wide to windmill them to a greater effect (the other Avengers keep watching the fork, just to make sure nobody loses an eye), and demands: "What were _you_ doing at eighteen, Cap?"

"Twenty," Peter corrects him.

"Really?" Tony asks, surprised. Then he returns to the point. "At his age, what were you doing – aside from being wholesome and patriotic?"

"How does it matter?" demands Bruce from his strategic position behind the sofa. He can duck and cover at the slightest hint of danger, e. g. Tony's not at all coordinated agitated gesticulation. "Are we seriously going to compare ourselves to one another? To what end? If you want to give Pe- Spider-Man advice, do it. But he's not obligated to listen to it, much less heed it. He's his own person – and I believe he has proven more than sufficiently that he can make his own decisions."

"Hear, hear," crows Clint.

"I was just saying," grumbles Tony. He flops down onto the couch, crosses his arms in front of his chest and pouts. "But, fine, don't listen to me. What do I know about batshit whackos seducing you and then stabbing you in the back? _Nothing_ , surely. When she fleeces you for every cent you own, don't come crying to me."

"Hey, I'm in the black this month," Peter says with faux-surprise and faux-amazement. "I've got… wow, that's almost twenty-four dollars!" He knows that Wade puts money into his wallet – and admires it for the level of skill involved, because in between Peter's instincts and speed, pick-pocketing him should be as good as impossible. Nevertheless, after the two occasions when Peter walked out of the building, and thus won their argument in the single most passive-aggressive way available, Wade has learnt not to reverse-steal more than fifty bucks at a time.

Peter figures a fifty isn't worth the argument.

Wade is crafty, so the individual fifties stack up, but they've got this down to an art now, and Peter figures that there's no point to messing with a system that sort-of works.

He likes not going hungry. As a motivator, that's the best one he's ever encountered (bar sheer survival). He's not a sugar baby. No, really, he's not. He just knows that Wade has the money, and doesn't have anything better to spend it on, and that makes it mostly okay – Peter still never _expects_ to be financially supported, and that's what matters.

Just like how all the Avengers accept the Iron Man's hospitality, because he can afford it and offers it freely.

Peter suddenly becomes aware that Tony is staring at him. He looks up, raising his eyebrows in a mute question that remains mute metaphorically as well because – you guessed it – _the mask_. It really does get in the way of social interaction.

"I'm gonna have a drink," Tony announces. "You… uh… have Jarvis order you some food or something. Clothes, maybe. Do you need help with your rent? Or you can just move in indefini-"

"I'm fine," Peter cuts him off. "Thank you. But, really, I'm okay."

And he is. Even if Wade is not here, slipping fifty after fifty into his wallet, Peter will make do. He's managed before Wade crashed into his life, and he's not nearly so dependent that he can't take care of himself.

x

The alarm rings.

It's not the _Avengers Assemble!_ Alarm, so it takes Peter a moment to identify what is going on, and once again JARVIS is invaluable.

"A suspect delivery to the reception in the lobby, sir," says the A.I. as Peter agonizes over his sartorial options. "Personnel evacuation has been initiated. Forty percent completeness at the moment."

Peter pulls on the Spider-Man suit. That seems like the safest bet.

Also, the second safest bet would be that the elevators are both busy, so he swings down to street level and gets in through the public entrance.

"Seventy-eight point five percent completeness," JARVIS reports.

The Avengers are mostly on the scene, but Peter isn't paying them any attention. The _delivery_ is spread over the reception counter. Five bulky packages, at a glance shapeless, all wrapped in the same manner, in the same paper, tied with the same kind of hemp rope. One is half-open.

They trigger the spider senses, but they're not bombs. They're not chemical weapons, either.

An argument could be made for biological contaminant, but somewhere in between his sense of smell, his intuition and his capability of putting two and two together…

Peter tries to pretend to himself that he doesn't know what he's looking at, but while his 'socially acceptable' self struggles with the idea and tries to figure out what would be the appropriate outwards reaction in his position, the fairly intelligent consciousness underneath already knows.

He folds in half and vomits his guts out, just barely in time to pull his mask up. He can't.

He just-

No.

Just… just no.

There are hands on his shoulders. Someone's talking to him. They can just as well spare the effort. Peter's not in the state to listen, much less respond.

He straightens up. His body attempts to dry-heave, several times, but he breathes through the spasms and holds himself upright by a grip on the counter. Distantly, he's aware of shouting and the security shepherding people away. There aren't many – it's late in the evening.

Steve's staring at the delivery note as if it was announcing the impending end of the world. He somehow manages to ignore the sawed-off leg that keeps bleeding, still, after however long it took to get it here from wherever it was dismembered – out of country, Peter remembers – and that means it's still regenerating.

Dying and reanimating and trying to reintegrate with the rest of Wade, but failing.

With a fairly good idea of what he'll see, Peter reaches out and opens the second parcel. His hands are shaking. His vision is all blurry. He blinks away the tears, but there's another wave of them already, and-

" _Deed wibers_ ," he mutters, and drags his spandex sleeve across his face.

The Black Widow reaches around him and cuts the rope inches from where a stubborn knot refuses to yield to Peter's fingers. She leaves the knife on the counter, in case it is needed again, and steps away, turning her attention to Steve, who has gone ashen and looks about as shaky as Peter feels.

"If it really is Yasha," says the Widow to Steve, "he's asking for help. This is bad-"

 _Ya think_?! Peter transmits in her direction, ripping away the wrapping and the plastic underneath to uncover the entirety of Wade's arm with a floppy chunk of the chest. Stripes of flesh and rubber-ducky-yellow fat hang off of it. A mobile piece of collarbone sticks out grotesquely.

"-Yasha never asks for help," she finishes. "I thought his programming wouldn't allow it at all."

"Programming?!" bellows Steve. "What? What – this is not one of Tony's robots! I am talking about a human being, Natasha!"

There's a crash and a roar. Peter's spider senses go insane. Another crash, and the wall gives. Bruce is through before he's even fully green. He disappears.

Tony takes off after him.

Natasha grips both Steve's wrists and stares up into his face, jaw squared, eyes shining. "You think that just because you've seen a couple of Hydra warehouses from the inside, you have the first clue about how evil humans can be to one another?" Her chest heaves, exactly once, and then she packs all of that cataclysmic emotion under her icy exterior.

When she speaks again, Peter's not watching anymore.

"What they did to me undid me completely, but it pales next to what they did to him. Whatever he is now – and make no mistake, Steve, it's _what_ , not _who_ – is all their programming."

Peter's unpacking the other arm, because he's a coward. The extremity twitches. The hand spastically fists, and a moment later attempts to grip Peter.

Peter evades.

Clint's suddenly there, holding the limb down. He twists, grabs, pulls, and then he's holding both arms down, together.

Peter's body tries to upchuck again. The reflex is nearly permanently activated, though, and as he grows weaker through the exertion and as his shaking becomes more pronounced, the only effect left is that it's hard to breathe.

"But…" Steve sounds choked. "…you said he – _it_ – it couldn't ask for help. So, if… there must be some _one_ left, Natasha-"

"You're deluding yourself. His strategies are planned by his handlers, and obviously we are dealing with one that is at the same time very clever, very creative, and very stupid."

"Stupid?"

Peter cuts through the ropes tying up the second leg. No, not _the_. Wade's leg. Wade's left leg, with the sinews hanging out through the ragged remains of the red and black suit. It's been broken.

And Peter is most definitely a coward, but he can't face the torso. He's leaving it up for last, and the parcel is so bulky and shapeless he's crud-scared Wade's head won't be there.

He wipes his eyes and can't breathe. Sod it, he thinks, and wipes his nose.

He hasn't wiped off snot into clothing since he was five and the crying jags – after Uncle Ben haltingly explained that Mommy and Daddy won't ever come back – had tapered off. There's tears and snivel and vomit all mixed together. Peter's the most disgusting thing he's ever encountered – and he's piecing together his quartered boyfriend whose dismembered corpse is oozing all over _everything_ , so that's saying something.

"Stupid," Natasha explains, "because they didn't realize that you will never let this go. You will hunt them down until there is no one left to keep you from him."

Peter's hand momentarily tightens around Wade's twitching knee.

 _Never let go_.

Okay. He's not making any promises, but he's stronger than this. He's stronger than someone taking a chainsaw to his lover and sending him hacked up, bleeding pieces that vainly keep trying to regenerate.

(No, he's not stronger. But he'll try. What the heck else is left?)

"Avengers, Director Hill orders you to stand down," JARVIS says from above the chaos, both literally and figuratively. "A containment and clean-up unit has been dispatched. ETA is eleven minutes."

"Oh," replies Steve. Then, more vehemently: " _Oh_."

Natasha takes a step back, releasing her grip. "Steve, don't do anything you'd re-"

"Very well," Steve replies with the sort of fake nonchalance no one with two brain-cells to rub together ever falls for. "Let's go."

He turns and walks away.

Peter incredulously watches his back, and thinks his own _oh_.

So, team. The Avengers. Seems like, if you're not part of the core group, your membership is situational. He knew, sure, but he thought it's been better lately – Wade made it better – apparently, that was just an illusion.

Peter throws himself forward, slashing the rope with Natasha's knife while the blade's owner chases after Captain My-Interests-First, snapping out something about the delivery note and withholding vital evidence.

More power to him, Peter thinks acidly.

"C'mon," Clint cajoles him. "You can leave off. SHIELD'll put him back together for you-"

Peter shakes his head. Wade is _his_. _His_ to mourn, _his_ to suffer with, _his_ to mother-hugging puzzle back together when he arrives through the post jigsawed like a horror-cliché threat, except that it's maybe a plea for help instead.

How? What is the logic behind that one? Peter doesn't see it, and he's used to Deadpool's logic.

His hands automatically slow down as he finds the corner of the wrapping paper. Will Wade be conscious?

Please, don't let him be conscious.

Please.

He'd pray, except he doesn't believe enough for it to work even as a placebo.

"Hey, kid. Please. Please – don't do this to yourself-"

Peter spins and webs Clint to the wall.

He has to know.

"Eight minutes, forty seconds," JARVIS warns him.

Peter blinks, wipes his eyes, wipes his nose, and gets to work.

Wade regains consciousness as soon as Peter takes off the garrote. He lets out a high, wheezing sound; then he coughs himself to death. He wakes up again after Peter's held his right arm to the caved-in destruction left of his shoulder. The flesh bubbles and spits out tiny farts; bones and sinews shift under it.

It slowly starts resembling a shoulder again-

The hand grips Peter's throat and squeezes, hard.

Peter chokes. He can't talk – can't tell Wade 'it's me, I'm trying to help, please let go'.

He's not going to let Wade kill him, though.

He grabs and twists – unintentionally half-pulling the not fully grown in arm from the 'socket' – and lets go when Wade screams.

He mumbles apologies, hoarsely and incomprehensibly, and he already knows that Wade isn't hearing him. Wade isn't seeing him, either. His head is there – thank all that may conceivably be holy! – but there's a blindfold tied over his eyes.

"Urwh-uangh! Urw-ungeargh!" Wade screeches.

Peter webs him down. He hates doing it, but he can't not, can't not and have him back, can't not and have him not taken away by SHIELD and done who knows what to. So, he can't.

He's shaky and on the verge of dropping down from exhaustion and pain and he thinks he'll do what Churchill said and keep going until there's a light at the end of this tunnel. Not that he'll care if it's a speeding train at that point. Just…

…anything.

Just anything.

He places the limbs where they belong and watches the mutated, cancerous flesh reach out with multitudes of tiny tentacle-y creepers and connect and grow together and try and reestablish the connections that used to be there.

It's perfectly grotesque and perfectly demented and Peter is perfectly aware that loving someone means basically 'up until you I used to have a self-preservation instinct'. It's not entirely true in his case, but his own break from rationality is a bit of a separate issue.

"I love you," he whispers. His voice doesn't sound like his voice, what with the recent strangling. His healing factor's not quite that fast. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I- _Wade_ …"

He chokes on a new wave of tears.

"One minute, Spider-Man!" JARVIS warns him emphatically.

There's no time for hesitation.

Peter mummifies Wade using what's left of his webbing fluid, and with unprecedented difficulties throws him over his shoulder. He's supposed to be too strong to even feel the weight of a grown man. He's always been.

"I'm sorry, Clint," he mutters.

Clint doesn't say anything, and if he reacts, Peter can't quite focus his eyes enough to tell. There's blood everywhere around. Wade's blood. On the floor. _Caution: Wet Floor_. Ha ha. Wade's trying to struggle against the mummification, and it's not helping. At all.

Peter just feels sick and tired.

His trainers slip in the blood. He goes to his knees. Pain stabs up from his patellae, but he grits his teeth and stands up again.

He drags himself to the elevator and stares at the buttons.

The door closes and the elevator moves by itself. A security camera overhead changes its angle ever-so-slightly.

"You are welcome, Mr Parker," JARVIS says. "As long as neither you nor Mr Wilson make me regret it."

Peter would happily make the promise. But…

But Wade.

x

" _Tank you_ ," says Wade, coming out of the gurgling lights-on-but-nobody-home phase.

Peter stares out of the window. It's night outside.

No. He frowns. Glances at his watch. He's not wearing it. He glances at Wade's watch, because Hello Kitty made it through failed assassination and dismemberment and post and the subsequent crud-show.

It's half past eleven in the morning. Almost noon.

But Stark Tower and JARVIS have the technology and wherewithal to adjust the A/C, engage reflecting panels, and apparently project the vista of nightly New York, all in the effort to calm Peter down enough for him to hopefully sleep.

He hasn't. He's too scared to ever fall asleep again.

" _I am Thor_ ," Wade continues along the vein he had opened. Not literally. No more vein-opening.

Peter wonders if it's possible to throw up long after there's nothing inside you. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

" _Yeah, that's my biceps_."

"I see your Kung Fury and raise you the Holy Grail," Peter whispers despite his still painful bruise necklace. " _Twas just a flesh wound_ , right?"

He thinks they talked about it before. Laughed about it. How if that happened to Wade, it really would just be a flesh wound. Peter's known his sense of humor sucked since he was nine and nobody at his school (including the teachers) got his then-favorite physics joke, but he's never had a clue of the true depths of its suckery. How could this ever have seemed funny?

"You gotta laugh, Debbie Downer," Wade tells him, only somewhat struggling to sit up. "It's the first rule of the Cool Club. You gotta laugh."

Peter feels tears trickling down the back of his throat, down his cheeks, and despite serious effort fails to muster the energy to swallow them away, wipe them off. He sits on the floor next to the bed, curled up as small as he can get, and stares at the night cityscape that's not actually there.

He maybe needs help.

Except, he's probably beyond help now.

" _Ňy_?" suggests Wade.

Peter slowly, haltingly shakes his head.

His lips are cracking dry; his throat is parched. He's not sure he could speak again if he tried. He wants to try anyway. He can't seem to force himself to.

He'll never forget a _second_ of those twenty minutes. Just twenty minutes. Everything feels like ashes. It's not gone, but it might as well not be there. Another tear breaks away and slides down his face; this time only from the right eye.

"Would it be easier if I died forever?" asks Wade.

"No!"

Oh. Apparently Peter can talk. And move.

He has twisted at the waist to watch Wade get up from the bed and stagger in his direction, eyes on the prize, like there's nothing more important in the world than getting to Peter.

Peter gets it. For a while today – no, _yesterday_ – there was nothing more important in the world than putting Wade back together. And doing it himself. He doesn't understand why. He feels a lot more rational now, and remembers all the reasonable arguments he could have given if anyone but Clint had even noticed his existence amidst all the uproar and upset. Those arguments would have been valid.

And only incidental.

"No dying," Wade promises easily. "Cross my heart, hope to die. Fuck. Not die. You know what I mean. I'm sorry, Aspirin, today sucked."

Aspirin? Peter wonders.

"It's what I really, really want," Wade explains. "Aspirin and you."

Peter lets gravity take him and more or less falls over to his side. The carpet's soft enough that he doesn't think he'll have any additional bruises. He'd like to fall asleep now. He's too tired to manage it, but he'd like it.

"Oi, _Señor en paredes_ , do we have drugs here?"

"In the bathroom, Mr Wilson," replies JARVIS.

If there are further instructions Peter doesn't hear them. He obediently takes whatever Wade brings him, with the full awareness that there's about a sixty percent chance it would kill a human adult. It won't kill Peter if it came from a bathroom cabinet.

Still, while he knows he would regret dying in hindsight, at this very moment he doesn't give a single darn.

x

"I done fucked up, I know," Wade chatters, playing a solitaire variation of ping-pong against the wall. "I went in like he's a bad guy, but he's not a bad guy, Spidey; he's not a guy at all so that sucks because he's got no weakness. Dough, rep, pride, secrets, family… I've used it all to get at the mark. You find their soft spot, you're in, baby boy."

So far the damages amount to a painting that Peter didn't really like (selected by an interior designer, apparently), a vase even Aunt May would have put on the very corner of the mantelpiece in the hope that it would get 'accidentally' broken, and some sort of rural ceramic plate with flower ornaments. Either Tony employs blind designers, or he's trolling his guests.

Peter knows which one he considers more likely.

Thwack-tock, goes the ping-pong ball. Thwack-tock. Thwack-tock.

Peter sits, unmoving; his eyes track the little white ball of their own volition.

"This one time I was going after a guy. He was a guy – I think so, at least – and he was bad, in that way good people get when they get better and better and better and then come back full circle from the other side. Old Luce. Or Yagami Light. Or Michael Jackson!"

Thwack, goes the ball. Pop goes the ball, hitting the cracked Plexiglas.

Pop does not go the weasel – the Weasel is Wade's friend. For a value of friendship. But it's not like Peter can talk.

Thwack. Tock.

"So this guy, he wasn't like inviting kids to Neverland bad, he was like let's make sure everyone's the same race and people stop killing each other over being racist pricks by turning everyone blue bad. Could pay pretty penny, too. Even offered perks – not Sally-Anne, the other kind of perks. I rocked blue, Petey. Blue is totes my color. I still unalived him, 'cause non-con genetic manipulation is nasty."

Wade has just enough money that he doesn't care. He's well off enough financially that he's unlikely to ever feel any strain, but not so rich that amassing money would become his chief objective in life. The things that scare him are many, but he reacts to fear with violence. If he has secrets, he doesn't remember them, and probably would appreciate being reminded.

The only way of blackmailing Wade that Peter can imagine (and he can only imagine it because there's something very wrong with his brain) is threatening children…

"It's the circle of life, Baby-cakes, and it moves us all, except not me – and not Wolvie – so in the end it just moves _you_ all. Moves _you_ away. From me."

…and maybe Peter.

Oh. Peter is suddenly Deadpool's greatest and most visible weakness.

"'s what I thought waiting in the mail. Bastard didn't even spring for one of those boxes with the 'this way up' sticker that always gets co-medically delivered upside down. So there I was, beside myself, and all the while I kept thinking I wanna see you again, and ask you to marry me for realz this time, only you weren't going to be there when I arrived in Hell and I sure as Hell – heh, _Hell_ – ain't gonna make a trip upstairs, which is where you'll be lounging all naked except for a loincloth made of a baby-blue cloud – not babies, you shouldn't make loincloths of babies, there's something pedophiliac about it _ewww_ – but a cloud, all snug 'round your willy, and a harp – Petey, you gotta get a harp or there's something wrong with the canon. Imagine an arachnid with a trumpet. That's worse than a Chaplin sketch."

Thwack-tock. Thwack-tock.

"So you'll be sitting in Heaven and playing your harp and _not_ thinking _hard_ about me, 'cause they don't allow X-rated thoughts in the Big Shiny Web Beyond, and there'll be me, cooking in a humongous lead pot of Satan's cancer soup – his favorite – thinking 'bout you in your _nebulous_ skivvies all day long, 'cause X-rated thinking's the most popular downstairs."

Wade misses a backhand.

The ball hits the table top, then the side of the cabinet, and from there curves downward to plop almost silently into the carpet.

"I was never gonna see you again, gorgeous." Wade sounds desolate. "I don't mind cooking. Or getting cooked. I don't really mind the skewering part either. I mind never getting to put my eyes on your beautiful face and my hands on you beautiful hiney."

Peter blinks. A wave of I-want-to-smile rises inside him, but doesn't quite break the dam of the terrible grey lethargy. _I love you_ , he thinks. "God help me, I do," he whispers.

Wade is sitting on his haunches in front of Peter. He doesn't know what to do with his hands. He puts them on Peter, then takes them away, then puts them back in other places. "It's like that time with the guy throwing himself 'round the neck of the whipped horse. God is dead, Spidey. You can't rely on that dude for shit."

Peter closes his eyes.

Wade touches him, pulls back, touches him again, scared but trying so _mother-hugging_ hard that it would be the single most unfair thing in the universe to let him think it's not appreciated.

"Unicorn," Peter whispers.

Ten seconds later, he's somehow hugging the ugly plushy, while Wade is hugging him from behind as if Peter _was_ a plushy. Wade blabbers on about existentialism and angels as Norse mythology, and Peter lets himself drift, uninterested in the sound yet feeling for the vibrations of the chest he's leaning against.

x

"I have procured a doctor's note for you," JARVIS says, interrupting Peter's silent but furious bargaining with himself.

On one hand, he knows he has to eat. On the other hand, he viscerally doesn't want to eat. Every bite of cold pizza is a concession won and lost at the same time.

He eats slowly, methodically, with tiny bites and thorough chewing and glad that this particular slice of cold pizza mostly tastes like nothing at all.

"It is, of course, counterfeit in spirit, but technically genuine," JARVIS continues, "and explains that you have suffered a bout of gastroenteritis. It seemed like the prudent alternative to informing your professors that you were otherwise occupied with 'confidential superhero business'."

So, Peter muses, this is another facet of the bright side to being loosely affiliated with a team. They may be a bunch of self-important drama queens, but they won't let him rack up unexplained absences that could threaten his education.

Sun shines through the windows of the guest apartment Peter's living in, and he's pretty sure it's the real sun shown in real time for a change. Another day has dawned, and Peter's managed to achieve a sort of equilibrium after Wade's finally tired himself into unconsciousness.

"Thank you, Jarvis," Peter says. It's progress.

"My pleasure," the A.I. assures him, and then gives him back the illusion of privacy.

" _Mine_ ," Wade mumbles into a pillow, protesting some imagined claim on Peter. His hand blindly gropes for another body he expects to find lying next to him. When he only touches cold blankets, he opens his eyes to squint at the room. "Boo."

The corner of Peter's mouth twitches. He's pretty sure that is a nickname, but it also works as an expression of disappointment or a dorky attempt to scare innocent by-standers.

Except that Peter's hardly innocent, and he's become inured to the sight of his lover's face. It's a face like anatomy blew chunks all over itself after a high school party with too much cheap alcohol, but it's really just a skin condition. Wade's eyes are human eyes, and his mouth sounds – and feels, and tastes – perfectly fine.

Excepting instances when an injury results in Wade drinking his own blood, when Wade's been eating industrial mac'n'cheese (Aunt May makes mac'n'cheese from scratch – Peter can't stand the orange goop) and… well, morning breath.

"Did you kill the Winter Soldier," Peter asks. He's not feeling up to much inflection yet, so it comes out flat. Luckily, he's still a whole lot of emotion short of accusatory.

"No, Petey-pie," Wade rumbles, rolling to his side. He rubs at his eyes, then lets his hand flop down and effects what on a non-scarred face would have amounted to a rueful smile. "He kinda you-know-what me."

"Are you going to." Again, Peter means to make it a question.

Wade understands nonetheless and, anyway, it's not like he ever needs to be invited to talk. "Lost my taste for it. I would, if he actually was shooting at you – that's right, no quarter for Spidey-snipers – but he wasn't, and he sucks. And not in a positive-"

"-life-affirming way," Peter finishes. He sounds bland to himself, and fails to smile to acknowledge the reference, but he tries. He is still locked in his own riff on the 'maximum effort' mode, and right now all that effort is being channeled into not falling apart entirely.

What would Wade even do with him if Peter turned into complete vegetable?

"Cheeseburger," he answers himself.

"Very life-affirming. I prefer tacos-"

"-and chimichangas-"

"-but cheeseburger is the original superhero food. Or, no, 'cause the original superhero is Captain America, so the original superhero food is probably Campbell's canned soup, but it's really the marketing that makes history, and let's face it, Tony Stark put the cheeseburger in the superhero."

"Many cheeseburgers in many superheroes," Peter agrees and, whoops, he's getting off topic of his off-topic. The original off-topic was that Wade keeps comparing himself to ground beef, so if Peter is vegetable and together they're cheesy, then all they need is a bun.

In the oven.

Oh, wow. Peter can feel himself descending into madness step by step, but so long as he isn't walking the path alone, it's not an entirely unhappy direction.


	3. Tending the Hearth

Part Three: Tending the Hearth

x

Peter's exceptional luck makes itself known once again: the first Avenger he meets face to mask is Clint.

The good part is that they are meeting one on one (not counting JARVIS' ubiquitous watch).

The not good part is that Peter all of sudden remembers their last meeting. He's already been feeling a couple of inches tall, but he might actually be shrinking further as they stand there, frozen, like a tableau of failed superherodom, looking eye to reflective lens.

Peter cringes.

"I'm so sorry," he forces himself to say. "I…"

He wants to say he didn't mean to do it, didn't mean to attack Clint, when Clint has been his staunchest supporter from the very start, but that would be a lie. Lying to this guy, who has been incredibly awesome in a low-key way, would not make Peter feel less like a butthole.

"Dude," Clint says. He moves then, bypasses the coffee machine and goes straight for the fridge. He pulls out five different juice boxes – all of them open – lines them up on the counter and makes a comparison of their contents. "This one time, I decked Coulson."

The confession comes out of blue, and Peter flinches. Still, he can't help the curiosity rearing its head. He shuffles closer to the chrome door of the industrial freezer and listens attentively.

"Op went to shit," Clint continues in a blatantly false conversational tone. "Of the five of my teammates only one made it out of enemy base, and I had to carry him to the meeting point. Then I got the memo that our exfil' had been shot down on the way, and we were on our own."

Peter is very, very young. Not quite childish, not really naïve, but listening to Hawkeye makes him realize that there is still a lot he hasn't seen.

"What happened?" he asks. He can't believe that Director Coulson would have left Clint there, wherever 'there' was. Aside from the whole Sacred Band of Thebes vibe between them, Coulson has always struck Peter as the kind of agent that would have walked over lava for his people. There was frankly no way that Coulson had abandoned Clint, and thus warranted a punch to the face.

"Coulson came to get me," Clint admits, replacing four of the juice boxes back in the fridge. "On a goddamn _horse_."

It sounds like the plot to a Disney movie, but Peter isn't about to say so out loud.

"He got me out of there, safe as houses." There is a sarcastic tone to Clint's voice, and Peter's mind is half-way caught up on what must have occurred before Hawkeye says: "Made me leave my buddy behind."

" _Director Coulson_?" Peter says incredulously.

Maybe he's still far too idealistic. Maybe it is actually a dog eat dog world-

"Newman was twenty minutes dead by that time, granted, but I wasn't really in the mood to listen to rational arguments," Clint explains. "So I punched him."

Peter nods. He doesn't know what to say. He remembers watching Uncle Ben die; remembers the minute of utter helplessness and then the couple of days of dissociation, when he couldn't make himself believe it happened. It was like a dream – like a movie being screened, and he just had to wait for the end credits to get back to his regularly scheduled programming. He would wake up in his bed and everything would be as usual…

It wasn't, though.

"What did he do?" Peter asks.

Clint shrugs. He takes a long draught straight from the carton and grimaces. "Barked at me. I could tell he used to be a Sergeant. But – nothing. He didn't mention it in the report, and I don't think he'd have brought it up if I didn't ask him about it point blank."

By now Peter knows where this is going.

"He told me… I'm paraphrasing here, kid, but basically the point was that we're human, and we've got human limits. We want to stay human, 'cause being human is a good thing, and being a monster is bad, so we've got to respect the limits. Our own, and each other's."

Clint is frowning a little, but in concentration rather than anger.

Peter nods. He thinks he understands perfectly, both the lesson and its implications as they pertain to him. "Thank you."

Clint shrugs. "Thank me by not becoming a homicidal maniac. I don't want to have to put you down one day."

That is a promise Peter can make.

x

Peter goes to school, gives his note to the nice middle aged lady at the office, fakes a smile so as he can when she asks if he's all better now, and goes through the motions of being a student.

He hasn't expected to one day be grateful for his utter lack of friends, but the day has come.

He drags himself back to the Stark Tower in the late afternoon and falls onto a couch, weary down to his bones. He wanted to go on a patrol tonight but, frankly, he does not feel up to it.

Wade finds him there an hour or two later. Peter is mostly asleep by now, but he perks up a little when he sees his boyfriend. Then he spots Deadpool's shuffle of preemptive apology and wakes up completely with a sudden surge of adrenaline.

"It's the thing, Pumpkin," Wade says, pulling his mask off to meet Peter's eye.

Peter has him almost trained. A little bit. Sometimes. When Wade really wants something.

"What thing?" Peter asks, rolling onto his side. The inflection is there, but he still sounds emotionless.

" _The_ thing," Wade answers ominously, dropping to a squat so he can give Peter an Eskimo kiss. "Do you want me to quit my job?"

Here's a man who's killed literally hundreds of people (maybe actual _thousands_ ), asking Peter for permission to go on killing people. As if this was somehow Peter's decision. As if Peter was strong enough, or had an ego big enough, to imagine that he could ever take the responsibility for a decision of such magnitude.

Peter isn't sure if he should be scared or angry or relieved. Sooner or later someone had to say this out loud – they couldn't subsist in that mutual unspoken 'we don't feel the same about this but let's just pretend it isn't an issue' beatific faux oblivion forever.

So, Wade's a brave guy. Peter loves him. Nothing new – all quiet on the Western Front.

For a moment Peter considers tossing out a glib 'Do you want me to quit mine?' but Wade's a brave guy and Peter loves him, so he doesn't do that.

"No," he says simply, and pretends that it wasn't ever an issue, that he didn't agonize over it on sleepless nights and that he hasn't learnt to make moral compromises with himself over it. It's scandalous how much easier that kind of compromising is, when you do it for someone you love.

Love's pretty dangerous stuff, apparently.

"That's splendiferous," Wade replies easily. "I thought Hillary would keep nagging at me until the cows moved to greener pastures." He stands up, laces his fingers and flexes, knuckles cracking like a rattle of dice thrown. "Incidentally, I Hello-Kitty'd his quiver, so we'll hear from him-"

Clint falls from the ceiling. At least so it seems in that first instance. Obviously he actually jumps down from a vent, but that takes Peter a moment to put together.

"Did you touch my bow?" Clint inquires sinisterly.

"Duuude…" Wade says, leaning back over the edge of the backrest until he looks like he has folded around it, and his head is upside down. "That'd be more private than touching your dick, and I'm faithful to my boo. No hanky-panky happened – but lemme tell you, the curves on that lady…" He trails off, dreamy.

"I know, right?" Clint agrees, and delves into the fridge. "That's fair, then. I wouldn't pick Hello Kitty – not my preferred genre of music – but maybe I can start a collection. A sticker from everyone on the team. Or-" He glances over to briefly meet Wade's eye (and doesn't bat an eye at the scarring), before he saunters off to focus on the intimidating selection of foreign cuisine leftovers filling the refrigerator. "- _auxilliary_ to it."

Clint, it seems, doesn't have a problem with killing people. It's his job, often enough.

So, Peter muses, it's not Wade whose ability to 'unalive' and not lose sleep over that is an aberration.

Peter's _inability_ to do so is not normal.

x

Clint, it turns out, is actually the only Avenger presently present in the Tower. And thus the second member of the team that has seen Peter's face.

The rest of the group are hunting down the Winter Soldier again, because they don't admit defeat. It's one of their more admirable qualities, and Peter wishes them a lot of luck at it, especially if it means he won't get shot again.

He didn't enjoy being shot.

Still, he's not thrilled when JARVIS explains that the sniper was aiming to injure or possibly barely miss Steve, so Peter stupidly risked his life for nothing rather than being a big damn hero for saving Captain America's life.

He stares at the wall for a while after that announcement, and then turns on his computer. Class work waits for no one.

x

Wade receives a package.

It's delivered to the reception, and JARVIS asks him to go down to sign for it – and then asks Peter to accompany him, just in case, because no one likes bloodshed in the lobby before eleven in the morning.

Peter thinks this is bullcrud. Wade is not some sort of psychotic maniac that cannot control himself… although… there might be a dearth of support for Peter's argument… thus, _just in case_ , Spider-Man tags along.

It turns out to be a good thing.

"Sir," the delivery boy says in a nasal voice, "you have to present a valid ID with your photo. Otherwise I can't release the package to you."

Peter suspects that the guy is an undercover SHIELD agent. Sure, civilians occasionally exhibit a complete lack of self-preservation, but this seems far too contrived.

Wade pulls out a knife. He doesn't do any fancy swinging, and doesn't even really brandish it in a threatening manner, but the blade's glint does its own talking.

"How 'bout you give that shit to me, and I sign my name all nice and proper, and nobody gets gutted," Wade suggests which, from him, is very restrained. Almost affable, really.

The receptionist presses her panic button. Stark Security swarm them, and it's only the spandex that keeps Peter from getting shot again. A couple of the men and a woman look like they are just waiting for an excuse – apparently the Bugle has been especially scathing, and Spider-Man is a public enemy today.

"Please, keep calm," JARVIS says from the speaker on top of the reception counter.

"…no one should know I'd turn up at this address, and anybody who does is more likely to send a letter bomb," Wade explains to the boxes. "Unless it's from Weasel. Weasel knows Al, and Al knows I'm crashing Spidey's crib."

"…have a strict policy regarding weapons!" argues the manager of the reception, who has come out to shield her underlings from the potentially disastrous clash.

"…Iron Man!" demands someone, and then too many people are talking all over one another, and Peter's spider senses alert him to impending danger.

He ducks a split second before the Head Receptionist (or whatever is her official title) pepper-sprays Wade in the face.

The effect is negligible through the mask, and what little damage the spray causes is healed momentarily, but Wade has shifted into his 'field' setting. He's tracking everybody moving through the vast hall of the lobby, all the exits and all the hostile Stark employees.

So far no one has shot a gun, but it seems like a matter of time.

"Should I be calling Mr Stark?" asks a familiar voice.

Peter reflexively springs back up to his feet and swivels on the spot.

Pepper is standing in front of him, with Mr Hogan hulking threateningly behind her. Her mere presence causes stuttering in half of the people who want to make her notice them.

"N-no, Ma'am," replies the Head Receptionist. "Absolutely no need of that. Just a small problem regarding the identity of this… person…" She points at Deadpool with the pepper spray still clutched in her hand.

The leader of the security team steps forward, gulps, and then pushes his chest out far enough that his shirt-button nearly pops off. "We'll just escort him out-"

"Wait a sec," protests the courier. "Did I lug these boxes all the way for _nothing_? I'm not taking them back-"

"Let me," Pepper snaps. She grabs the clipboard out of the delivery man's hand and reads the details.

Wade sidles up to her and points. "I signed it. See here? Wade Winston Wilson. Double-you, double-you, double-you dot…" He pauses dramatically. "…cum."

"You didn't-" Peter facepalms and then, for posterity, adds the other hand, too, with a less than satisfying smack. "You did."

"Need another hand?" Wade inquires helpfully. "Could make it a triple-facepalm. And quadruple. We could try finding more people to add more hands, but White-y says we should talk about it before we have an orgy. What's your opinion on orgies-"

"Vetoed," Peter says, suppressing a vision of Wade offering his wrapped-up and bow-tied dismembered hand like a present.

He doesn't mind that people do all sorts of sexually liberated stuff, in theory – more power to them, as long as nobody gets hurt – but he can't imagine himself in such a situation and, frankly, he doesn't want to. Also, he's feeling so possessive about Wade that if anyone else tried to touch him, Peter would probably go into limb-ripping mode.

"Ma'am," the Head Receptionist addresses Pepper after she returns the clipboard to the courier, "this party is disruptive. Shouldn't we let the security-"

"They are guests," Pepper cuts in.

Peter can tell that she is not at all happy about the fact, and he suddenly feels like an intruder here. It's sad; he has almost managed to become comfortable in the Tower. Knowing that Pepper has been uneasy with his presence comes like a blow from an unexpected direction.

"I can go," he offers.

Wade's hands on him tighten.

Pepper puts her cellphone into the pocket of her power suit and surveys Peter and Wade as if they were a pair of clowns who failed to be as boring and unfunny as she expected them to be. Which is fair.

"Follow me," she orders.

They do. Peter and Wade each take a box, and the three of them along with Mr Hogan – who nervously flutters behind Pepper and tries to communicate his protests against this course of action with exaggerated facial expressions – file into an elevator.

"Miz Potts," Wade says, "your staff is made up of a bunch of rude fuckers."

Peter flinches. He wants to apologize – but he's not sure what for. Wade is right, after all. And although the way he expressed himself is not the most polite either, it does get the point across.

"Ignore Muriel," Pepper replies and then, shocking Peter into choking on his half-formed apology, adds: "She's a total cow."

Wade nods sagely. "That explains why I'm kinda scared of her."

"Excuse me," JARVIS speaks.

"Yes, Jarvis?" replies Pepper, reflexively glancing up.

"I have identified the contents of the boxes. They are mostly Mr Wilson's weaponry, which he has lost on his mission to neutralize the Winter Soldier."

Peter's jaw sinks. He stares at Wade.

Wade stares at the boxes. He sinks to his knees and hugs one. His cheek presses to the QR code. "Bea? Arthur?"

"Also," JARVIS continues, "there seems to be a bomb-"

"Called it!" Wade exclaims jubilantly, jumping back up to his feet.

"-please do not panic. I will be taking you directly to floor seventy-eight, so you can make use of the Hulkproof chamber. Mr Spider-Man, may I ask for your assistance in disarming the device?"

Peter gulps. He's in debt here, though, so he nods. Pyrotechnics can't be all that complicated if every second action hero can disarm a bomb with a Swiss knife, right?

"No way!" Wade exclaims, glomping onto Peter. "If anyone's getting all up on a bomb, it's gotta be me!"

Peter doesn't argue. He doesn't want to see his lover splattered all over the walls, but he's rational enough to admit that Peter splattered all over the walls would be worse. And definitive.

Maybe, just maybe, he's beginning to get over it.

x

With JARVIS' expert instructions and Wade's one-time-only willingness to take directions, the bomb is disarmed without anyone being splattered over anything. In the end it turns out to be mostly a decoy – it contains enough explosives to rip apart the box itself, and maybe flambé whoever stands within three steps of it, but considering what else could have fit into that space, it's obviously just another trap in the game of cat and mouse someone is playing.

The Winter Soldier? Or an over-creative handler of his? Someone completely different?

In the absence of answers, Pepper insists on offering drinks all around and calling for take-out. Peter doesn't argue. When they arrive in the living room, they find that the Avengers have returned in the meantime; several of them are even present, in various states of consciousness.

Tony's just awake enough to take a glass of whisky from Pepper's hand before he closes his eyes again and mumbles incomprehensibly into the couch cushion. He doesn't spill a single drop, though – that's kind of a worrying level of advanced alcoholism skill.

Peter finds an unoccupied armchair. Wade seats himself in Peter's lap and compulsively hugs his two prodigal katana to his chest.

Happy, as he insists on being called, hovers for a bit, but at some point Pepper gets annoyed enough to glare at him, so he begs off and goes home. Pepper decides that she's finally off the clock, too, and proves that to the whole world by taking off her torture-instrument heels.

"Mama," Wade sighs, covetously watching as the shoes of pain are set down onto the carpet.

"You don't have a dress to wear with those," Peter points out. His hindbrain is kind of invested.

"They'd go with the lindy bop one," Wade guesses.

"The navy blue one with the polka dots? I thought that was for dancing. Could you even walk in them?"

"No way, Spideyboo. I'd need a bigger size. Miz Potts' got tiny, tiny feet."

Peter becomes aware of the stare directed at them from the armchair opposite. Pepper looks perplexed, although that's a fairly typical reaction. She wasn't often there when the regular Avengers were becoming acquainted with Wade and Peter's particular brand of weirdness.

She doesn't look like she's about to run for the hills, luckily. "How did you two even-"

"Don't-"

"-meet?" finishes Pepper.

"-ask him that," finishes Peter, a second too late.

Wade shrugs, like the answer should be perfectly self-evident to anyone speaking any variation of the English language.

Tony groans (like he's figured what the answer's going to be before it's verbalized) and drinks all his Scotch in one gulp, without opening an eye.

"On the web," Wade says to Pepper, and ignores the wave of dissonant noise of disgust coming from the other Avengers.

Tony rolls off the couch and sleepwalks to the bar to drink some more Scotch. Clint pulls out a pocket sewing set and starts making tiny, neat stitches over a cut on his upper arm. Natasha looks at Deadpool with murder in her eyes, and then blinks it away.

Then, suddenly, someone is laughing – a deep, rumbling laugh that shakes the dishes on the tables. Glasses rattle and clink against one another. Sam wakes up with a start. Faces turn in the direction of the hulking beanbag.

Thor awkwardly half climbs out of it, half topples over, sits up and laughs on, clutching his stomach. He wipes tears from his eyes and delightedly repeats: " _On the web!_ "

x

"Hey, Arachnophobia," Tony says, strutting into the communal kitchen where Peter sits on a barstool with a long-since-cold pickle jar of coffee and a long-since-cold forkful of leftover lasagna suspended in the air just below his jaw.

Peter notices that he's holding the fork up and lets it down. His arm protests the motion. Apparently, he's gotten side-tracked in between bites and spent nearly an hour reading his textbook while holding his arm up.

He sighs and tries to rub the stiffness out of his muscles. It recedes quickly, but he suspects that's mostly down to the spider-bite, not because he's got any talent at massage.

"You in there, Spider-Man?" Tony demands, a little worried.

"Were you talking to me?" Peter mock-inquires, covering for the fact that he has gone away in his head. "I don't have quite _that_ many issues, thanks."

Tony snorts, turning away to stab at the polished buttons of the space-age coffee machine. "That was a movie reference, you heathen."

Peter hums. "Well, I had dinner with the actual god Thor last night. I guess that automatically makes me a Heathen…?"

Tony twists his head around to grin at Peter over his shoulder. "I like that. I never really thought of it that way. Does me being on a team with Thor mean I have to trade in my atheist card?"

"No, Sir," JARVIS assured him dryly. "It is a matter of faith, and since you are aware of Thor's – and, indeed, Loki's – existence based on observation and experiment, your belief only extends to your own technology and your own senses."

"He's autotheist?" Peter inquires, amazed.

"That is not what I meant," JARVIS refutes, but he doesn't sound very certain.

Tony is, predictably, grinning. "I like that even more. _Autotheist_. Jay, design a mock-up of a web page. We're going to start a new religion. We've already got a cult of individualism, this is the logical step forward. I am, after all, a futurist."

"Mr Stark hasn't slept for a significant length of time since Mr Wilson… returned," JARVIS explains quietly.

Oh, Peter thinks. So he's not the only one affected by what happened. And, come to think of it, Peter hasn't seen Bruce since.

Tony doesn't really seem depressed, with how quick to laugh he is, but he's already explained it, hasn't he? If the choice is between depression and mania, he will pick mania.

He's trying really hard, too, and Peter doesn't want to rain on his parade, so he pretends to yawn – setting off a genuine yawn from Tony – and hops off the chair. He stacks the (really captivating) textbook under his arm and grabs his (really cold) plate.

"There's cocoa in the cupboard, Tony," he says. "Jarvis can talk you through preparing it."

He walks away before Tony can realize that Peter's running from him and his desperate cheerfulness. Besides, hot cocoa really does help.

A bit. Although maybe that is more the effect of Aunt May, who is usually the one to deliver hot cocoa in Peter's life.

Whoops? says Wade's voice in his head.

x

He talks a girl off of a bridge one night. Okay, more like threatens to catch her and tell on her, but the whole thing sucks majorly. He kind of leaves with the impression that her life maybe actually is bad enough to warrant that sort of solution, and offers to put her in touch with someone that could help.

The thing is, she doesn't really want help. He's pretty sure that by saving her life he hasn't helped.

And that's completely mind-altering. Peter's always thought that he was helping by saving lives. But what if… what if he isn't?

x

Peter finds out there's a battle going on because Wade calls him in the middle of it. "Swing by, baby boy. These guys drop down a league without the Hulk."

Honestly. That is a thing that happens.

"Jarvis?" Peter inquires, getting to the penthouse to exit via the landing pad, because this high the windows are not designed to open.

"I received direct orders to not involve you unless absolutely necessary, Spider-Man," replies the A.I. "The situation is not yet that dire."

"I'm not a child," Peter protests, feeling angry and hurt. Now it finally makes sense, why the team wouldn't treat him like a member. He thought things have gotten better since Wade renegotiated with SHIELD on his behalf, but most likely the Avengers just realized how young he was and decided to protect him instead of considering him disposable.

"No, you are not," JARVIS agrees, "but you are a student with a full and demanding workload, and you have recently been gravely wounded. The Avengers are simply concerned, and wish to ensure that you have the opportunity to gain the education toward which you are working."

Peter doesn't have an immediate response to that. He needs to think about it. It doesn't sound bad, and that confuses him.

He mentally shelves the topic, swinging across Manhattan to the site of the fight. The enemy is – _shockingly_ – not Hydra. Unfortunately, it seems to be a different villainous organization, and as opposed to the bads Peter usually encounters, this one is championship material.

Not quite alien invasion level, but there is an invasion already in process, and there are people dying. Peter swings down, grabs a pair of kids just before they're blown up and deposits them on a nearby balcony. He breaks the doorframe, shoves them inside the apartment, and for a moment allows himself to look back.

Their mother is already dead. She was standing too far away, trying to buy the kids time to escape, and Peter couldn't have taken all three of them in one swing.

He's suddenly angry.

He doesn't remember much of the battle afterwards. He doesn't even really fight; his webs are no good against the glowing orange guys, so he focuses on evacuation. He saves maybe fifty, sixty people before his web shooters run low, and then suddenly there is Hydra as well.

There aren't a lot of them – a team of four, as far as he can tell.

He's pretty sure this isn't a planned mission; they were just nearby, noticed what was happening and decided to take advantage of it.

One gets blown up by one of the glowing orange people.

One Peter leaves webbed to a streetlamp.

One jerks like he was shot and runs away. He disappears on the stairs to the Subway station before Peter can even consciously decide if he intends to pursue.

The last one… Well, Peter is really, really angry. There are corpses lying on the sidewalk. He hears crying and screaming. He hears the tail-end of the battle through his comm, and in between Tony, Clint and Steve he gets that it was a terrorist attack. A _terrorist attack_. Some assholes wanted attention, so they murdered people to get it.

"Wade?" he says. He doesn't recognize his own voice for a moment there.

"Stay put, Spidey," Wade replies immediately. "I'm there in a flick of a switchblade. Just tell me you're not leaking-"

"I'm fine," Peter replies. He's sitting on the dented roof of an old, beat-up Ford, hunched, trying not to look around. The groaning man somewhere far off to the right finally falls silent, hopefully dead. Peter has seen him, some time during his fight against the rogue Hydra agents, and already then knew there was nothing he could do to help.

Maybe euthanize him.

He shudders. He should have… he should have… he doesn't know what he should have done. Maybe not come at all. Maybe he should have let the call go to voicemail and kept on reading Dr Connors' chef d'oeuvre.

Wade dances round the corner and into the street. There's no music, but either he needs none, or he's listening to something no one else can hear. Considering his tendency to talk to the boxes, this is a pretty normal state of affairs with him.

He cha-cha's around the corpse of the last Hydra agent, and then spins back and squats down, looking closer.

He stands up, rubbing his chin. "Petey… did you unalive that gal?"

It turns out that Wade Wilson is better than Peter Parker at drawing a line in the sand and not crossing it.

Peter wants to cry, but he's pretty sure that big boys don't cry. Isn't that a thing? It is a thing.

Wade doesn't cry. Granted, that may be because if he did he would be crying 24/7, but still. Peter hasn't been called a cry-baby since middle school, and there's a reason for it: between deep-seated survivor's guilt and his tendency to internalize responsibility for everything that goes wrong, the bullying trained him to withstand pain, loss, failure and humiliation with as much stoicism as any teenage boy was capable of.

Peter's an adult now. A superhero, however nominally. So maybe he wants to cry, but he can't – not out here, where anyone could see.

"She was a very bad person," Peter points out. He doesn't know anything about her, except that she was Hydra, and that she didn't mind people dying as long as she got what she wanted.

"Petey, you don't unalive people. It's part of the whole… Spider-Man mythos charter declaration thingy. When great power comes… and then the bad things happen? They happen because of you."

They both pause and reflect for a moment. There's something teeth-grindingly disjointed about Wade's misquotation, but neither of them can actually put their finger on it, so they leave it be.

"Umm… yes. Right." Peter actually has an argument. A very good one, too. What was it again? Oh, yes. "And now I've used my power to save all those people she would have killed but can't because… that." He points.

The woman is oozing out a couple of her vital organs is what he means, but he can't really put it in words. The gore seems like a temporary state of being now, and Peter knows intellectually that other people don't do the trademark Wade morning-after with the regeneration and the regaining of vital signs, but right at this moment he's just sitting on the slightly dented roof of a car, in a street, and watching one of today's villains' corpse decompose at a glacial pace.

He thinks maybe this isn't alright.

He thinks maybe _he_ isn't alright.

"What's the date?" he inquires. He isn't wearing his watch. He doesn't know why. He promised Tony he would keep it on him – it's got the GPS chip in it, and it seemed like a reasonable alternative to getting LoJacked. Tony was really gearing up to chip Peter like a pet.

Peter gets it. In theory. He's seen Bruce's files, and Tony's, too. He hasn't seen Pepper's, out of courtesy, but he suspects that's just a variation of a theme. The long and short of it is that detainment sucks, especially if you have information someone wants, skills they may be eager to exploit or unusual physiognomy they want to study.

Peter, for his sins, has all three in abundance. If anyone captures him, he's toast. Or jam. Jam is more likely. Or they'll go all out and he'll be toast _with_ jam.

"The twenty-first, babe," Wade says, sounding unusually subdued.

He sits on the roof of the clunker next to Peter, ignoring the creak of strained metal under their butts. His arm – bulky, heavy, strong – comes around Peter's shoulders. One-handed, he recovers a mangled packet of cigarettes out of one of his numerous pouches. He hooks a thumb under the edge of his mask and pulls it up over his nose. It makes him look like an alien from The Original Series.

He sucks a cancer-stick – _heh, 'cancer'_ , only, _not funny_ – straight out of the packet and spirits the rest of it away. He chews on the end of the cigarette.

After a while he turns to Peter. "Hey, beautiful. You got fire?"

There's a while of silence. Crickets would be chirping, except this is the middle of a concrete jungle, so there is distant traffic instead, and maybe some rats scuttling somewhere below if someone has very good hearing.

"I mean, I know you got fire," Wade backpedals, "but no matter how hot you get, you can't exactly light my fire. Except in my pants. You light my fire every time, baby. Fuck, I just want a smoke."

Peter hates the smell of cigarettes – but on the other hand, he's pretty good at dealing. So, he's glad for himself but manages to also be sorry for Wade that he doesn't carry a lighter on his person.

"If the Fantasticos were around," Wade continues, "I'd just ask that Johnny fella. Or maybe not. Wouldn't want you to be jealous, baby boy. He's one hotass, but not as hot as you. Except when he's on fire. I don't want you to be on fire. Literally. Otherwise I want you on fire all the time. Fuck, this arson metaphor is fucked up. I just want to say I love you."

"I just want to say how much I care," Peter whispers back, letting the misquoted lyrics fall into place. He means it, but can't find the energy to convey it at the moment, so he's very glad that good old Stevie Wonder said it for him.

"Love," Wade sighs dramatically, "is blind."

And Peter must be an ableist asshole, because he's suddenly giggling. He doesn't know where the fit's come from, though he's pretty sure that it can't be a healthy place – is this how Tony feels? – but at least he's feeling something. He's pretty sure that Mr Wonder is a great guy, and that he'd completely forgive the moment of politically incorrect humor in the light of the situation – not that he'd see the light – holy dog-do, Peter's just digging himself deeper here. What he means is, he's sorry. He doesn't mean it.

"I'm bad for you," Wade announces.

Peter stops giggling. He's back to planning the pantsing and the hanging from the library portico. This man is his – _his_ – and unless he disavows Peter, they're not breaking up. Nope.

"Before me, you'd never have k-worded anyone, no matter how bad they were-"

"That just makes me more effective and, let's be realistic here, that idealism never helped-"

"And I could be that for you. That thing that stands between you and the necessity of unaliving the scumbags-"

"I'm an adult, Wade, I don't want you to coddle me-"

"I wanted to be that. I need to be _something_ and _that_ at least made sense-"

"Where the Flour-Uranium-Carbon-Potassium do you get off trying to rationalize my love for you?!" Peter suddenly becomes aware that he's raised his voice, and the only reason why he isn't standing in the middle of the street and waving his arms to illustrate his (dubious) points is Wade's heavy arm around his shoulders.

"Not love, baby boy," Wade assures him. His arm moves away from Peter's shoulder only for the hand to appear at the edge of Peter's mask, tugging it up. And then gripping Peter's neck and tugging _that_ , until Peter yields to a kiss. And another.

Peter concentrates on breathing, so they don't end up with that funny vacuum-effect in between their respiratory tracts.

Breathing feels unexpectedly good.

"Love is a many-splendored thing," Wade declaims once they've separated their respiratory tracts again. "But it's not enough on its own. And the other stuff is hard, when you're a meat-popsicle gun-for-hire. Lemme be your gun-for-hire – or lending, but just for you, special deal – and go back to being the _friendly neighborhood Spider-Man_ , yeah?"

Peter sees how much sense that makes.

He's known this for a while: for all his insanity, Wade is a wise man.

"Yeah, okay," Peter replies. He gives his lover a short, chaste kiss, and slides down the side of the car to the sidewalk.

His eyes stray to the dead villain. It surprises him how sorry he suddenly feels. He won't wake up from nightmares of her, he doesn't think – not when he's got so many nightmares starring Wade and Harry and Gwen and Uncle Ben to contend with – but his ability to regret the killing is almost… reassuring.

He swings away, hoping against hope to clear his head. He stops on the closest rooftop when he hears music.

' _If every child on every street had clothes to wear and food to eat that's a-_ '

"Hello?" Peter says softly after picking up the phone.

There's the sound of a sharply drawn breath on the other side of the line. "Oh. Oh, dear. Excuse me for a moment-"

"Aunt May?"

She blows her nose.

Peter flinches.

"I'm here, sweetheart," she says. It's been a long, long time since she called him that. He used to find it embarrassing – just another proof that he is a darn moron sometimes. "And I'm perfectly alright now that I've heard from you. I've seen bits of the fighting on TV. This was all far less frightening when it just happened on the news, but to watch when I know you're out there in danger-"

"Listen to me, you little shirt-lifter!" snaps another voice. Aunt May's phone is grabbed from her hand and Blind Al gets on Peter's case as if she's been there since he was an ankle-biter. "Just because you fuck up and your Aunt's righteously pissed at you doesn't mean you're absolved from the duty to let her know you've got all your limbs intact. Next time you're in the same damn city as a battle and don't report to her the second it's over, I'll come after you and-"

"Al!" Aunt May protests in the background. She must do something truly awe inspiring (Peter shivers a little), because not only does Blind Al shut up, she also hands the phone back. "There is nothing, _nothing_ you could do, Peter, dear, that would stop me worrying about you. No matter how angry or sad either of us is, we will never stop speaking. I know Ben taught you as much."

Peter tries to blink away tears. It doesn't work so well, but, hey, the mask absorbs them. He hangs his head and stands on the rooftop, far above the anthill that is Manhattan.

"If you try to cut yourself off from me again, I will walk into the Stark Tower and give Mr Stark a piece of my mind. Surely Miss Potts would understand the need to keep in touch with your family?"

She would, Peter knows. And she would absolutely adore Aunt May, too – frankly, who doesn't? Even Blind Al took to her, and that's saying a lot.

"I'm sorry I disappointed you," Peter finally manages to say.

"Oh, my boy." Aunt May sighs. "We live such lives, and they all look so much easier from the outside than they truly are, Peter. On both sides of the equation."

She's right, Peter knows. He's isolated himself by keeping his secret other life from her for years. She doesn't understand, can't really empathize with him. Peter is only now realizing how little he truly knows this woman – how embarrassingly lost he is when he tries to figure out what goes on in her head.

He's brought far too much pain into her life, and still doesn't have the first clue about how she feels about things.

"I am sorry for putting you through this."

Al shouts a few very vulgar words in the background; Aunt May shushes her, and then pulls out an unusual, slightly dry tone of voice: "I rather think that you have enough problems on your own, my dear. How about you give mine back, and let _me_ worry about them. If you want to _borrow_ something, I am sure I have your uncle's beret hat around here somewhere-"

Peter snorts, unable to stop himself.

His Aunt tuts at him, but doesn't say anything about animal noises. There's quiet on the line for a while; on her side Peter can hear the little sounds of her puttering around – the creak of a door-hinge, footsteps, sherry poured, clinking of glasses. The springs of Uncle Ben's ancient armchair groan under Aunt May's slight weight.

"To our health," she says.

"That's to you, Pete," Al grumbles. "I ain't worried none 'bout your squeeze." Apparently, it's not her first drink tonight.

Peter nods, accepting the mission. "Thank you. I love you, Aunt May."

Love is pretty dangerous stuff, but it's also what matters most.

x

A long shower helps Peter compose himself, which is a blessing, because as soon as he resurfaces he's grabbed by Captain America – _literally!_ – and pulled along to a full-team debriefing.

Wade is absent, but no one even mentions him, so chances are that he's not included in the 'team'. Maybe he reports directly to Director Hill. Maybe he doesn't report. In any case, if he were here he would probably be in handcuffs, so disappearing is unquestionably the smart thing to do. Hopefully he'll be waiting for Peter at home with a pile of pancakes. That does actually sound like a slice of paradise.

Peter's stomach growls.

Luckily, the mask hides his expression. Although, he gets more sympathetic looks than mocking or glares, so he's sure he's not the only one with some post-fighting munchies.

Peter stands behind Clint, trying to shrink into his shadow. Occasionally he shifts from foot to foot. He's bored. The reporting itself is mostly up to Steve, and Director Fury does little but look angry and intimidating and poke holes into Steve's explanation.

"Can anyone tell me who actually got this woman?!"

Peter startles. The screen Fury's pointing at shows a photo of a familiar body. Peter's stomach makes another noise, but this one isn't a sound of hunger. He shrinks further, until he can barely be seen over Clint's shoulder, but he's not a coward. He's done this, it's on his conscience, and he can stand up straight and face the consequences of his actions like a man-

"Could've been me," Tony says, barely pausing in his texting. "Says here that injuries were consistent with being _slammed_ against the fire escape at a high velocity. Sound like a repulsor blast to me."

Peter should speak up.

It's unnerving to see Tony so unconcerned – he's known that Tony kills people, a lot of people, often enough, and doesn't lose sleep over it. It's part and parcel of being the Iron Man, of fighting terrorists – people like Hydra and the Ten Rings – and _AIM_ , apparently, which is the acronym Fury's given them for the orange blowing-up people – all organizations that are way too powerful (and damn near indestructible) despite the indiscriminate wholesale slaughter of their minions.

Peter once used to hate the idea that a good superhero could do these things. He was firmly in the camp that agreed with Tony Stark's statement that he _wasn't_ a superhero and had no aspirations to become one; that he simply went further than other businessmen in protecting his investments.

He sees it all from a different perspective now. He sees the never-ending assault on peace and on the security of the nation (of the planet, often enough lately), and feels the pervading atmosphere of hopelessness. These people have been trying to hold up a flood with their bare hands (and their super-advanced weapons) while Peter himself was playing around picking off car-jackers and off-license robbers, and comfortable on his moral high ground.

No wonder they didn't use to take him seriously.

He's joined the bigger league now.

The rules are different. Trying to keep the fight 'friendly' would just get people killed.

On the other hand, Wade's offer to be Peter's gun affords him a lot of the luxury. He just hopes he won't eventually turn into a hypocrite, the way Steve sometimes gets.

"Fine," Fury grumbles. "If nobody else is claiming the kill, let's just put in on Iron Man's tally. You managed to refrain from unreasonable collateral damage – _congratulations_ ," he drawls sarcastically, moving to another topic as if no one really cared, "but you should have done better on the civilian deaths. Why did these guys kill _more than fifty_ people before you got there?!"

Peter feels like he's sitting on a see-saw. One moment he feels guilty, then justified, then guilty again, and then once more justified. At this point he has no idea what is the reasonable response.

He watches as Natasha buffs her nails, glancing sideways at Thor, who is trying to mimic her and nearly stabs himself with a file. Clint is sleeping with his eyes open; he doesn't quite snore, but he does a kind of heavy breathing that betrays his somnolent state to anyone with ears. Sam looks like the lights are on, but no one's home.

Steve is the only one who pays attention, and even he does so with a hyper-polite straight face that is just hiding the longsuffering grimace underneath.

Peter knows why Wade isn't here, but he misses him right now. He wants to lean over and whisper some sort of commentary – a hash-tag-line, for his shame – and listen to the responding babble-

"Am I boring you, Spider-Man?" Fury demands.

Peter guesses that he really is the softest target in the room. He puts on his teacher's pet face – a wasted effort, since it's hidden under his mask – and pulls his shoulders back. "Professor," he says, cheerfully digging his grave, "we've done this chapter last week. We should be doing the Fourier transform today; you said in the beginning of the semester that it was going to be on the finals."

There is a – one, single – second when the Black Widow herself looks at Peter with cool, calculating eyes, trying to gauge if he's finally had that long-anticipated psychotic break. She relaxes almost immediately, but Peter still congratulates himself on the achievement.

"This ain't fucking high school!" Fury emphasizes (grossly misjudging the complexity of Fourier transforms, heh, _complexity_ ) even though his expression implies that to him it's clear how anyone could mistake this place for one. "If you don't-"

"Why d'you keep us in detention, then?" Tony inquires, not even lifting his eyes from the screen of his phone.

"Stark," Fury says, clearly having passed the line of not giving a darn into that comfortable place of utter apathy, "you're suspended for the rest of the day. Out of my Headquarters!"

Tony stands and leaves, walking and texting at the same time.

Steve sighs.

x

There are pancakes. Peter gorges on them.

So do the Avengers. The levels of Wade-hatred within Stark Tower hit an all time low; no one even says anything pithy as Wade drags Peter away from the group with the explicitly and repeatedly stated intention to ravish him silly.

"Privacy… please… Jarvis…" Peter pants out as he's divested of his shirt and then tugged down on top of his boyfriend, with his mouth otherwise occupied. He kneels up and tries to reestablish a little equilibrium.

It's a thing with Wade – Peter's noticed, of course, but they've never actually talked about it. Peter might be about hundred times stronger than Wade (and that is a conservative estimate), and might have grown some actual shoulders over the course of the past year, but he's still sort of wiry.

Wade is built; he's pretty much twice Peter's mass. A big, solid man with rock-hard muscle all over.

Peter would very much like to occasionally be pressed down by that familiar, warm bulk, but Wade freaks out whenever he feels like he's limiting Peter's freedom of motion. There's something very ugly, very painful behind that reflex, and most of the time Wade probably doesn't remember what.

He just acts on it.

So Peter's sitting across his lover's thighs and feeling the familiar tingling in his fingers that he knows is about to climb his neural network to the center mass, setting off sparks along the way, when there's an aborted inhale and the action stalls.

"Wait, Petey."

Wade's hands on Peter's shoulders make him sit up, putting a space between them that allows for comfortable eye contact. It's fairly dark in the bedroom, because Wade never really is all that comfortable without his mask on, but there's enough light to see that he looks worried.

Peter's not sure what's wrong. He puts his palm on top of Wade's head and strokes along the skull, feeling the ridges of the ravaged skin there.

"You've ever seen the first Angelique movie? The one with Michele Mercier, not the de-flavored remake?"

Peter hasn't. He hasn't seen the remake either.

"They skipped the singing. I sing like a sick crow, but I can't help but feel with the Geoffrey bastard. With the face of horror. Not Freddy Krueger horror, Geoff' got off with just one half of the gore-facial, but it wasn't much of a turn on. No wonder Ange thought she should get off with that other dude before-"

"You don't sing like a sick crow," Peter protests.

Wade is mediocre at carrying a tune, but his voice is alright. And it's not like Peter's got an ear for music. Aaaand they're getting side-tracked.

Which is weird, considering their current circumstance.

"But, Prince Pete, the gore-face means you've gotta wait 'til Ange wants to jump your bones for real. And sometimes that takes a while. And that's fine."

Peter finally gets it. He feels his lips stretch in a wide, helpless smile.

"Now there's that panty-dropper, ba-baby boy. If I was wearing panties, they'd totes be droppin' down all the way from up 'ere. Prolly land on somebody's head, and then Stark would have to pay them off to not sue him for sexual harassment – 's too bad I'm hanging free today."

Peter takes the cue and presses his palm to Wade's crotch. Yep, action is happening. Definitely not hanging anymore.

He giggles.

Wade grabs his head and gives him a smacking kiss, a little mistargeted but making up for the lack of aim by overabundance of saliva.

Peter reflexively wipes his cheek, but even as his nose scrunches up, he feels himself relax.

It's been a while since he smiled, he knows.

They haven't had sex since before Wade left to find the Winter Soldier – since before Peter was shot, actually – and Peter hasn't even been into kissing lately. Of course Wade noticed. He hasn't pushed – maybe because he wouldn't know how to, but that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that as much as he wants Peter (damn near all the time, any hour of any day when nobody is or recently has been gutted) he's stopped to check if Peter's just going along with the flow, or if he actually wants this, too.

I love you, Peter thinks, but doesn't say it, because it would be the worst timing – Wade would take it as an argument rather than the statement of fact it is.

He's sorry it's taken him so long, and he's grateful for Wade's presence and support. He can't imagine what his life would be like without this man. Doesn't want to.

"Take my clothes off," Peter commands.

" _You wanna take a ride on my disco stick_?" Wade sings.

Peter would have fallen over giggling if Wade wasn't keeping a solid hold on him. They chuckle together, wait until the hilarity fades away, taking with it the previous sense of urgency, and then Wade's pulling Peter's shirt over his head.

"I'ma make you feel real good, Petey. Real, real good," Wade promises, and proceeds to do so.


	4. That Sort of Thing

Part Four: That Sort of Thing

x

"Oh, goody," Tony drawls from his prone position on the couch. "Spidey got some last night, and he's all over his inanition."

Peter doesn't react to this. He idly notes that Tony's still keeping hold of his phone, but most of his attention is on the spectre of coffee. It hasn't been an especially long night for him, not after the physical and mental exhaustion of the battle, but it's too early in Peter's opinion and he's got a day of intense studying ahead of him.

The idea of coffee was the only thing that convinced him to get out of bed.

He acquires a pot, pours its contents into a mug and puts the kettle on. He's going to drink this here, and then take his trusty pickle jar with him down to-

"Any news?" Pepper inquires, striding across the living room space in another pair of shoes that Wade would covet if he saw them.

Tony looks up. His mouth quirks, although Peter can't say if that expression is guardedly happy or sardonic. "I'm working on him. Good news is, he hasn't cut me off."

Pepper leans down for a quick kiss. "Let me know if I can do anything to help you convince him."

"Will do," Tony agrees, watching Pepper's butt as she walks away in the direction of the elevator. "You're _very_ convincing when you put your mind to it, Potts. Brucie-bear won't know what hit him."

Oh, wow, Peter thinks. Really?

And then another part of him responds: 'you've got an especially dirty mind, bucko. They're friends. Remember friendship? It's a thing people have, when they're not you.'

The elevator door opens. Steve and Sam come out of it, radiating energy after their morning run, exchanging good-morning's and how-are-you's with Pepper. Everyone sounds fine, as though they've put yesterday out of their minds. That's an enviable ability.

Steve goes straight for the fridge and the selection of juice. As opposed to Clint, he doesn't agonize over his choices, and simply picks hundred percent orange juice, even though Sam protests that: "Freshly-squeezed is better."

"Glad to see you up and about, Spider-Man," Captain America says cheerfully.

Peter pulls his hand out of the pocket of his hoodie and raises it, showing off the little sign he has prepared for this eventuality. It's not a plushy, but he's learned that the Avengers don't have the requisite understanding of plushies.

Maybe they would respond better to action figures, but Peter doesn't own any.

"Spider-Man," Steve speaks slowly, bemused, "have you just raised a little sign saying 'shhh, I'm busy talking to the boxes'?"

"If you can read that, I don't see why you're interrupting my chat," Peter points out.

The kettle boils. He pours hot water on his instant coffee powder. It's going to be basically nasty tar, but he's told that's normal for students facing finals.

"Is this like when a computer writes 'processing, please wait' on the screen?" Steve inquires.

"One may assume so," Sam agrees, sounding a trifle amused. "Commendable effort. The fewer teammates we have that transfer their inner dialogue to the outside world, the better."

Now I'm your teammate, huh? Peter thinks. He doesn't say anything, luckily – he probably would, but at the moment he's busy talking to the boxes, even if that really translates to mentally moaning about exams, reviewing review plans, suppressing the occasional creative mental depiction of Wade and wondering where Wade even is. He's disappeared from Peter's bed sometime during the night, and hasn't left a note.

Peter just hopes the Winter Soldier won't be involved this time.

x

The Winter Soldier isn't involved.

Wade returns in the evening with arms full of tacos, and JARVIS calls Peter to come pick him up before someone kills him out of sheer annoyance and someone else has to clean up the resulting mess.

Strangely, when he arrives at the communal floor it's packed with laughing people. He has the suspicion that Wade didn't come directly to him for the sole purpose of acclimatizing the Avengers to his presence. He's trying to get into their good graces through feeding them.

It seems to actually work.

"…and then Copycat tried to bribe me with sex," Wade is saying. He skips over to Peter and glomps onto him. "Can you believe it, snookums? I said, I said, have you ever even _seen_ Spidey? He's got superhuman superflexibility, does one-handed lifts with eighteen-wheelers, is the smartest guy under the age of thirty on the globe, he's _fun_ , and we're _in love_. Sex does not _get_ better than that."

Peter's pretty sure that his face is on fire. Thank Anansi for the mask.

Tony rolls around on the couch cushions, laughing. When it seems like he's about to mellow down due to lack of air, Clint mutters to him: "You're just jealous," which, of course, sets him off again.

He's as red in the face as Peter must be, with tears in the corners of his eyes and gasping for air. "No-ooo…" he wheezes.

He looks like he doesn't have a care in the world. Like everything is funny.

Peter wishes Bruce would just come back already so Tony could stop laughing so hard to keep himself from falling apart. It hurts to watch. He sees Pepper across the room – her eyes trained on Tony, and a line of worry between them.

If not for his mask, their eyes would be meeting, and he would manage to communicate his sympathy. He's a complete butthole.

"You look worried," Wade grumbles, head-butting Peter like a cat expressing its ownership (and Peter's reflexively petting his head before he notices what he's doing). "Stop looking worried, Spidey. It's long since over between her and me. She tries anything, I'd know she's not you in three seconds."

" _How_?" Tony asks, morbidly fascinated.

Natasha appears seemingly out of nowhere and takes a perch on the sidearm of the couch. Her right eyebrow is slightly raised.

"The boxes would tell me, obviously," Wade blows them off.

Peter ignores the resultant groaning. "I heard there were tacos."

Wade rapidly straightens which, considering that he's got a firm grip around Peter's waist, lifts Peter off of his feet.

"Down," Peter orders.

"I brought two hundred tacos, Sugar-Spidey. You ever seen two hundred tacos together? That's a lot of tacos-"

"I'm pretty sure Thor can eat, like, fifty in a sitting," Peter points out. He's seen Thor eat. It's an experience he's not likely to forget any time soon.

"Superhero eat-off!" Wade exclaims.

"Contenders?" Peter asks.

The rest of the room has fallen quiet. Peter's pretty sure they are watching the conversation as if it were a tennis match.

"Thor versus the rest of the team! You'll be the judge. The well-fed judge. And I'll eat-"

Peter's relationship telepathy works fast enough for him to clap his hand over Wade's mouth before anything too obscene comes out of it. They stare at one another, mask-to-mask, for a moment, and understand the terms of the wager perfectly.

Peter nods. "I dare you."

Wade makes victory arms – letting Peter drop to the floor, _finally_ – and runs off to make the competition happen.

Peter hurries to steal his portion of the food. Not because he's ravenous (although he is) but because he's not up to facing the witnesses to that interaction.

x

Thor wins.

He spends the night throwing up, but he seems cheerful about it. Not much can keep that guy down.

x

Peter also wins.

x

"Petey, is this a fort built out of empty energy drink cans?" Wade asks, letting himself into their designated set of Stark Tower guest rooms. He turns on his heel and surveys the post-apocalyptic wasteland that used to be a lounge which could rival the best Four Season apartments. "Holy Spaghetti Monster, Batman, this looks like walking cancer! And I should know, because I am walking cancer, Princeling, with just enough healing factor to make my cells wish they had never chosen to mutate!"

Peter has aced his Cancer exam, but he's not going to even broach the topic with Wade. That way lies the Neogenic Recombiner and lizard apocalypse. Deadpool would _not_ be improved by becoming part-lizard.

So Peter just inclines his head to the side, squints, and says: "Nah, still just looks like finals to me."

Wade sits in his lap, utterly unmindful of the textbooks and folders and binders Peter hastily moves to the side. "Far be it from me to ruin the Danny Jackson vibe – you're my favoritest geek, Dr Parker-"

"Not a Doctor," Peter grumbles. Right now he feels like he won't even get the Masters.

"-and that's saying something, 'cause I know _a lot_ of geeks. Back when I was just this run-o'-the-mill dying mercenary, I met a few biochem dudes. They pumped me full of shit that gave me a healing factor. Did I ever tell you 'bout this? I've got such mixed feelings 'bout biochem."

Peter freezes. This… this hasn't occurred to him. _How_ hasn't it occurred to him? How did he overlook up until now that he's minoring in subjects that are giving Wade screaming nightmares?

"…but I guess if anyone ever figures out how to give me my pretty face back, it'll either be Hammertime's space wizard bro, or a cute lil' geek in birth control glasses."

"So," Peter speaks when he rediscovers his voice, "you don't mind me studying this?"

"Mind?" Wade repeats, like he doesn't understand the question. "You've got a sexy one, bunny button. Get it? It's 'cause I think you're cute." He's referencing that time they were getting to know one another, and possibly implying that – just like Peter – he knew from the start what he was getting into.

Peter leaves it at that. Besides, equations are starting to leak out of his ears, so he figures it's time for a break.

x

Studying in the communal space is more or less impossible, and Peter only attends the mandatory 'team night' under direct threat from the Black Widow.

He thought he was in the clear after he managed to turn away Captain America with his deadly expression of disappointment, but then Natasha alit in his room and _explained_ that Tony needed his science-babble fix, and Peter was to provide it _or else_.

Peter desperately hopes never to learn what 'else' means, so here he is, letting Tony jibe at the physics and complain about the squishy side of the science, and trying to ignore the TV in the background. For some reason – he suspects irony's sake – the Avengers are watching Friends.

It's not exactly the most ignorable thing, but it's less terrible than, say, HIMYM.

"-why would anybody mar something as streamlined by attaching it to unreliable wetware?" Tony grumbles. He shows off the schematics of the Winter Soldier's arm on his tablet.

Peter is fascinated, although in his case it's less of a hard-on for the technology, and more of awe at how it's connected to the human's neural network.

"This is amazing," he breathes, completely distracted from the actual subject he's supposed to be reviewing. He takes the tablet from Tony and scrolls down for the specs. He finds himself shaking his head. "This isn't _possible_ for a human body. That's straight up magic-"

"I know, right?" Tony agrees.

Peter tries to hand the tablet back. This doesn't work, so he puts it down and lets Tony pick it up.

Tony pretends it's all Situation Normal – which it is as far as Peter's concerned – but there's a strain around his eyes. Whatever that is, nervousness or shame or self-deprecation, Peter just wishes he could come up with the words to reassure him that it's perfectly fine.

"You're talking about Bucky?" Steve demands. Apparently, he has infallible my-brainwashed-friend-has-been-mentioned detection abilities.

"His arm, to be specific," Tony replies. "She's a beaut-"

"I'd offer to cut it off for you," Wade puts in before Tony gets punched in the face, and continues before he himself gets punched in the face: "It's bound to slow him down a bit – but it won't work. I may be the blade that slices straight through Hydra whenever the mood and the money take me there, but I don't really think either Bea or Arthur would slice through that piece of tech. Buzzkill. I could cut off the other arm. Though, word to the wise, Mister Proper, there's far too little of that guy left to take away any more pieces."

Steve gulps, still not used to the way Wade can be metaphorical and blunt at the same time – the way he gives you the goriest imagery and so sets you up to be relieved when reality pales in comparison. He looks to Peter for support, and Peter is actually focused on something here, but he has a sneaking suspicion that those superheroes that aren't at the same time lawyers and journalists and scientists (and whatever other day jobs they manage to hold onto) simply live their lives like SWATs (spending their days working out and keeping fit according to their own schedule) so they simply _do not understand_ the concept of someone _being too busy_.

Peter feels like he's living in a permanent time debt – to himself, primarily, to Aunt May in little increments for years (since Uncle Ben), and lately to Wade. He tries. Mostly, he crashes and burns. Mostly, there are criminals and emergencies and AA alarms.

"Please, if at all possible, keep the rest of Bucky intact," Steve says, with his usual – so unusual, really – mix of sincerity and stalwartness. His eyes beg for clemency for the Winter Soldier, who hurt Peter and Wade both.

"We need something that will hack through that piece of Automail," Wade muses. "Amestris called – they want their tech back! Speaking of hacking through titanium: hey, boffin, any news on the lightsabers?" Wade leans back, chair and all, and in a show of remarkable dexterity and balance does not crack his head open.

Peter's not worried. It's an incredible luxury to care for someone who can't get damaged permanently.

"No functional prototype yet, honey, sorry," he says, answering the underlying question of whether they – Peter and Wade, as a unit – are ready to forgive. Since Wade is, Peter would feel like a complete heel to say no.

Still, it's not easy, and he doesn't feel much like talking about it anymore. He leans over to give Wade a perfunctory kiss before moving back to his pile of study materials.

Wade grabs him by the sleeve of his hoodie, pulls him back down and snogs him thoroughly. Peter tries to scowl as he shifts away, but for some reason that's impossible to do around a smile.

In the background, the pre-recorded audience obediently laughs on cue.

x

The finals kill Peter. Not literally, but he doesn't remember getting back to the Tower.

He sleeps long enough for it to almost be considered coma, and when he wakes up, the Tower is empty of any Avengers.

JARVIS catches Peter up, in between mother-henning him to eat and nagging at him about the state of his laundry and _his room_ , at which point Peter starts to feel really uncomfortable, because not even Aunt May has ever hounded him this much. He obediently tidies up – that was always the plan, only the action itself got postponed due to the twenty-hour nap – and listens to JARVIS' account of recent events.

Some kind of intel apparently came in from SHIELD, and now the Avengers are _once again_ busy with official Avengers stuff.

This time it _includes_ Wade.

So Peter spends a few nights patrolling.

It's oddly relaxing – to deal with just thieves and robbers and car-jackers and saving stupid, drunk people from taking headers off rooftops, which for some reason are prime party locations. He, morbidly, likes saving people from burning apartments the best, because that's the only time when everybody is happy to see him.

Honest, Peter's never had a single butthole try to call the police on him when he's pulling people out of fire. Rescuing kids seems to be the magic.

Not the literal magic like the Winter Soldier's working artificial arm. The metaphorical kind.

But Peter's fine with that – on account of the kids being alive and well. That's a pretty unassailable outcome (although the Daily Bugle does try to assail for all that Jameson is worth).

x

As narrative causality would have it, this is the point when the Winter Soldier resurfaces.

Peter in sitting on the couch and reading – and not even textbooks for once! – when his spider senses go wild.

He throws himself to the floor.

Nothing happens.

He waits for a few seconds, while the feeling-like-a-paranoiac slowly creeps in. He can't explain in. Can't say what startled him so badly that he would take a clownish header off of the furniture in the middle of a paragraph that was even relatively boring for an author like Doyle.

"Do not get up yet, Mr Spider-Man," JARVIS says, so sternly that Peter just rolls over, puts a hand under his head and waits.

Maybe it wasn't just paranoia, after all? He has extensive experience with his spider senses, and they have yet to betray him.

"Shooter's position determined," JARVIS says abruptly. "I am initiating counter-measures-"

"No!" Peter knows what 'counter-measures' means. "Let's not release the Iron Legion in the middle of Manhattan, please? Let me try it my way."

A hologram in midair pinpoints the location of the sniper, and Peter's already known that this is the Winter Soldier – his own reflexes are superhuman, and he's only been alerted and reacted _after_ the sniper moved to fire, so if the sniper's managed to stop his motion in time _after_ he saw Peter ducking, it means his reflexes are possibly even faster than Peter's – but the distance of the nest JARVIS has indicated is _ridiculous_ , so there's really only one person that can be behind that scope.

The resident A.I. takes a while to calculate and predict the possible outcome of 'doing it Peter's way', and eventually gives in, albeit with audible reluctance.

"As you wish, Peter. Please note that if you are wounded again, the reaction from certain parties will be very explosive."

If Peter got shot again, he would be most worried about Aunt May's reaction. He can't imagine it being _explosive_ , per se… but it would definitely put the fear of the Distinguished Lady into its witnesses.

Peter crawls across the penthouse, keeping low so the sniper wouldn't see him. Unfortunately, not wanting to be seen by his potential murderer (which doesn't make any sense – has Steve's old friend completely lost his marbles, or is this some unexpected change of strategy?) means that he can't use the landing pad.

Still, Tony Stark is a genius, so even if the windows don't open, there is no dearth of emergency exits, if you happen to have JARVIS on your side.

Which Peter does.

He swings around Manhattan, remaining as out of sight of the Central Park Tower as possible, until he gets to it from the other side. JARVIS in his ear confirms that there is no sign of any support team for the sniper, and that Peter's advent is unlikely to be spotted.

Peter calculates the arc so close that on the downswing his toes nearly brush the pavement. He feels the momentum redistributing liquids inside his organs, and at the apex he lets go of his webbing.

For an instance he flies.

The Winter Soldier notices him before Peter touches down on the ledge. The man is amazingly fast. If Peter were baseline human, he would have been DOA.

Peter hops off the ledge, sticks one palm and one sole to the side of the building and webs the Winter Soldier in the face. He watches him hit the ledge with a dull thud, and a clang, and a few cracks. Shrapnel flies all around; Peter idly bats aside a piece that would have hit him in the face, and watches.

The Winter Soldier rolls over and struggles, blind and unable to breathe. He tries to pull off the web, but only manages to glue his hand to his face.

It's the right one, so he eventually frees it, leaving the glove faux-comically hanging off of his face.

Peter continues to watch.

This is the guy that shot him. This is the guy that quartered Wade.

Peter's not going to kill him, although there is enough of an impulse there that he considers having an accident happen… but then he admits that this is sort of a Wade-situation for Steve, and if ever there was a case that could not be clear-cut even with a laser, it is this one.

"Jarvis?" he says. He's not going to kill the Winter Soldier – honest, he isn't – but his usual modus operandi is to leave the incapacitated criminal for the police to pick up, and that obviously wouldn't work here. SHIELD is nowhere nearby to take over.

And Steve wouldn't want to give this guy to SHIELD anyway. Just like Peter refused to leave Wade to them. People disappear in SHIELD. Sometimes they come back different.

Sometimes they never come back at all.

And not all of that is their allegedly-past Hydra infestation.

"I have prepared the Hulk-proof chamber," JARVIS replies in Peter's comm. "It shall suffice for the time being."

The Winter Soldier flops over weakly, and then seems to fall unconscious.

Peter doesn't believe the ruse. He can comfortably go without air for three minutes. He guesses he could survive a good eight, maybe nine. This guy is more like Steve than like Peter, and Steve once went without air for sixty-eight years.

Peter squats on the ledge and mummifies the assassin, uses some more web to create sort-of straps, and carries him back to the Tower on his back like a rucksack. A big, bulky, heavy, unwieldy baggage.

"Check if he's dying?" he inquires once he's within the reach of JARVIS' sensors.

"He is well enough, Peter," the A.I. assures him. "There are no signs of asphyxia. Surprisingly, he is still conscious."

"Supersoldiers are a pain in the neck," Peter decides. He unloads his backpack by holding the straps in his bare hands and dissolving the webbing.

The loud, dull crash-clang of the body behind him is no less satisfying than it was the first time.

"That, indeed, seems to be one of the qualities the serum enhances," JARVIS agrees. Then he makes a sound almost like a sigh. "I do hate to prevail upon you, Peter, in light of your past encounters with Mr Barnes, but could you disarm him?"

And here Peter thought that he would just leave him mummified for the next few hours until the webbing degrades. But, no, that would have been too easy.

He squats next to the mummy and is about to say 'you owe me one' when it occurs to him how many times JARVIS went out of his way for Peter. So he just says: "Subtract one from the number of favors I owe you."

"I would, but I am not counting," the A.I. replies with equal parts of sarcasm and reassurance.

Peter is touched.

"I have informed the Avengers of your exceptional catch. They are on the way back. ETA two hours, forty minutes."

Peter frowns. "Subtract two."

x

Peter has stopped short of literal disarming, which means that the Winter Soldier is not entirely without a handy weapon. _Handy_ , heh.

JARVIS works hard to distract him until the Avengers arrive-

-and when they do, things go pretty much exactly the way Peter imagined they would.

"Stevie…" says the terrifying assassin in the voice of a kicked kitten. He's curled up half on the floor, half on top of Captain America.

Peter's never seen anyone but Wade cry without crying, but that's unmistakably what's happening in front of him now. Sobbing, weeping, blubbering, without a single tear or a single snot bubble. Dry.

Captain America runs his fingers through the dirty, longish hair of his once best friend, blinking like someone who's perfectly aware they are dreaming, but would give just about everything to never wake up. He looks like a religious fanatic, like a zealot, ready to strap himself down with explosives and blow himself to smithereens, because why not? Why not? It's not like anything but the guy in his arms matters, and the guy in his arms is a mirage. If some god promised Captain Rogers that after death he would get Bucky Barnes back, provided he took any given number of people to the grave with him…

Peter blinks and looks away. No, Captain America wouldn't do that. He's just not entirely sure how much of that idol is left in Steve Rogers. Still enough not to go on a killing spree, he hopes.

"Bu-cky," Steve says, mechanically, like a wind-up doll. His hand comes up again, fingers card through Barnes' hair one more time.

Barnes' artificial fingers grab Steve's wrist, pull his hand away from himself, arm extended. With his flesh fingers he traces tiny, almost invisible scars on the inside of Steve's forearm, then elbow (this seems to tickle the Cap, who squirms a little, but not enough to get away) and upper arm as well.

It's only thanks to his spider-enhanced senses that Peter can see rows upon rows of faded trackmarks.

Barnes repeats the process with Steve's other arm.

It looks pretty much the same.

"Bu-cky," Steve pleads softly.

"I don't remember," replies Barnes, just as softly. "I don't remember, Stevie, I get these flashes, bits here and there but none of it makes sense. You were tiny. And dirt poor. Drugs would have killed you. What the fuck, what the- the fuck is… why?" The wave of words wells in his throat and it's too much. He falls silent under the pressure.

Steve stares at his wrist, held fast in five metal fingers. "Project Rebirth," he replies.

"Blew you up," agrees Barnes and then, in the colder voice more fitting for a ghost assassin, continues: "Supersoldier serum and Vita-rays. The subject dosed and irradiated at regular intervals, while subjected to a barrage of physical exertions."

Steve nods. "They sanitized it later, of course. Couldn't let the public know Captain America was a junkie."

 _Better living through chemistry_ , Peter thinks. He can't throw stones – in his case it's better living through biophysics, and maybe an argument could be made that he didn't choose it, except that he would have, and he's proud of that, so he refuses to hide behind semantics. Even from himself.

"So," Tony announces, clapping his hands. "Everything peachy-keen in the land of Denmark? No more trouble in paradise? We're all aboard the Enterprise now, on our mission to seek out-"

"Shut up," Natasha says, with shocking lack of harshness.

Tony takes a deep breath and, ironically, deflates a little. Some of his nervous tension drains away, as if Natasha had patted him on the shoulder and promised that things would be alright.

Peter looks around the room. Aside from Steve – who is high as kite on epinephrine and a bunch of other hormones – the Avengers seem to find themselves on various points of the wary scale. On one hand, it's good to know that they don't execute Barnes on the spot and/or don't immediately take him into the fold as one of the team.

On the other hand, it's never been clearer to see how much _nobody_ in this room gives a single mother-hugging darn about Wade.

Sure, the Winter Soldier hasn't killed anyone ever since he turned up in the 'hood. He hasn't permanently injured anyone, and what injury happened – namely Peter getting shot – was the result of Peter acting stupidly rather than any intention on this guy's part.

And who cares about any harm done to Deadpool? It isn't like it counts, is it? It's _Deadpool_.

Guy was probably asking for it.

Peter, sick to his stomach and lightheaded, spares one last look for the burrito of mixed mutual protective instincts lying on Tony's carpet – and flees.

x

Wade seems curiously robbed of words in the face of Peter turning up on the doorstep of his hovel of an apartment on the edge of Hell's Kitchen in a truly skyscraping dudgeon. He doesn't know how to respond to Peter who is incoherent with rage – humor doesn't work; food doesn't work; physical affection nearly gets Wade punched. There's a dawning of the familiar self-hatred in Wade's eyes, and that is what finally calms Peter down enough that he can breathe and maybe recover a semblance of rationality.

Peter gets over himself and glomps onto Wade from behind, sticking like a barnacle while the man mixes batter for pancakes.

He drops off when the hot oil starts hissing and spitting.

The process of making pancakes is unusually quiet today. Even when Peter was studying, so deep in his head that he would eat whatever Wade gave him to the point of making himself sick, Wade used to sing along to the radio.

Speechless Wade is a little funny. And cute. And, for some reason, he has kidnapped the unicorn plushy from the Tower, so Peter now sits on the ratty couch rescued from a rubbish heap, has a staring contest with the toy and is – inevitably – losing.

"I'll unalive a couple of big fish and buy you a tropical island," Wade suggests. He pats the unicorn on its fluffy head, and then pats Peter on his fluffy head. And passes him a plate full of diabetes.

Peter leans back to look at Wade's upside-down face. This way it looks like Wade is smiling. Except, of course, if Wade's face was the right side up, then the smile itself would be upside-down.

"Maybe Doom has the right idea with this declaration of autonomy thing," Peter agrees. Then he frowns. "Sovereignty?"

"Monarchy?" Wade counter-suggests.

Peter nods sagely. "You did say I was a prince."

"You're my prince," Wade declares mushily, and makes an attempt to kneel at Peter's feet to complete the fantasy, but Peter's only just getting to the point when he might be able to accept a hug without wanting to scratch somebody's eyes out. Wade obligingly wraps Peter up in his arms while Peter holds his plate up to give him access. "Most of the Avengers have pretty hefty bounties on them."

Peter snorts, but this is one of the moments when it's impossible to tell if Wade is being serious, so he shakes his head, too. Just in case.

"Just putting it out there," Wade mutters into Peter's shoulder. "I totes could do it. Well, maybe not Dr Green, but the rest of them, betcha. With that kinda dough, we could buy, like, the whole Malta."

"And enjoy it for a couple hours until Fury has it nuked," Peter points out reasonably.

He can feel Wade's pout against his skin.

The unicorn's beady eyes are still staring; Peter's lost the contest, and he's lost his illusions, and he's lost a lot of respect for the people he used to respect, but he's not feeling like everything is falling apart anymore either.

Well, there's one good thing about this situation. His Christmas list is greatly reduced, so his wallet won't suffer that much this year.

x

Peter is almost certain that he would have had a hysterical scene in the middle of the debriefing if not for the fact that Wade is taking him for a ride on the insane wave today.

As a survival skill, insanity has turned out to be priceless.

Deadpool and Spider-Man enter Tony Stark's home cinema almost unnoticed and completely unacknowledged.

Barnes is absent, which Peter appreciates. Thor is also absent, which disappoints Peter, although he wouldn't mind if it meant that Thor was actually guarding Barnes. Sam isn't here either – Clint's just telling Steve something about a video consultation with brainwashing experts, which Sam's apparently attending as the only actual _trained_ psychologist who has recently come into personal contact with Barnes.

That doesn't sound like a half-bad idea.

While Tony and Steve get into an argument regarding how important it is to cooperate or not cooperate with Fury regarding the care and feeding of their captured internationally wanted assassin, Peter borrows a discarded Rubik's cube that lies on one of the seats and solves it.

Then he makes Wade mess it up, and then solves it again. Yeah, he still remembers it. Ten years without putting a finger on one of these toys, and the algorithms haven't changed a bit.

"Cat's cradle?" he suggests, wishing for something a little more diverting.

"… _down will come kitten, cradle and all_ ," Wade intones, and palms Arthur's handle. Which doesn't look as dirty as Peter hears it sound in his head, automatically admonishing himself for the thought. No, Wade has gone right back to considering the Tower enemy territory and doesn't want to have his hands tied up which, sadly, makes perfect sense to Peter.

Wade sprawls over three seats like he owns all the furniture, and tugs Peter down into his lap. They have a brief tussle over the position, and end up sitting pressed together, side to side, with Wade's arm over Peter's shoulders and Peter's hand on Wade's thigh, if only because Wade's got long legs and Peter would have had to stretch awkwardly to reach his knee.

He absently traces the seam of the Kevlar pant leg with his nail.

Natasha alights in the row behind them; she leans in with her elbows on the backrest and her chin in the cradle of her palms.

"So, the Winter Soldier is _safe_ now?" Peter inquires.

"Safe enough," Natasha replies, freeing one hand and wiggling her fingers to indicate the relativity of 'safeness'.

Yes, Peter knows what that means. He's just wondering why James Barnes got accepted into the fold so easily despite his history of indentured servitude to the Nazis _and_ the KGB. It feels like there should be some sort of half-way stage, internment and de-programming.

"We're working on it," she assures him, while they all watch Steve and Tony whisper-shouting at one another and widely gesticulating.

There's nothing left of the Captain America persona in Steve as he gets into Tony's face, flushed pink and snarling like he wants to bite someone and spread his rabies around. Clint gives up on playing mediator and backs away to a _relatively safe_ distance.

"I can see that," Peter replies dryly.

Natasha's finger jabs him between the floating ribs. While he's biting down on a pained shout (since he doesn't want Wade to start the bloodshed if it isn't absolutely necessary), she leans closer and mutters: "We weren't exactly vacationing for the past few weeks, _malchik_. We got our hands on damn near all the data about the Winter Soldier that _exists_ , so if I say he's safe enough, you'll take my word for it."

Whoa, Peter thinks. So it's not just Steve that's over-the-top personally invested in Barnes' recovery. Natasha looks a little rabid herself.

Suddenly there's silence. Peter searches for the source of the unexpected tranquility, and he finds it. Ironically, it's Fury.

Well, Fury's videocall, which JARVIS has put on the big screen.

While Fury looks around the room, the Avengers sort of congregate together, and they do it by moving closer to Natasha (as if she was some sort of homing beacon or a shield against the potency of the Director's glare) and consequently closer to Peter and Wade. Tony flops down onto the next free seat in their row.

Wade's campaign for acceptance must have worked, if Tony doesn't have qualms about putting himself within Deadpool's personal space.

Wade twitches a little, but calms down again when Tony magics up a bowl of popcorn from under the seat in front of him, pulls it into his lap and suddenly both his hands are too busy to be a threat. Wade re-focuses on Natasha again, although he's not too concerned – he trusts Peter's senses to alert them if they're in any danger from these people.

"Cap," Fury growls, "I'll tell you the same thing I told Barton when he brought in the motherfucking Black Widow, and that I told Spider-Man when he brought in the motherfucking _Deadpool_. Which you were _not_ supposed to take as a challenge and find a _worse_ brainwashed mercenary enemy of the nation."

Steve puffs up his chest – there is a moment of tense silence, as the onlookers wait with bated breath to see if that one button will fly off or not – before he says, in the chiding voice of nice yet strict dads everywhere: "Sir, none of what the so-called Winter Soldier has done was his fault-"

"Yeah," the Director cuts in, ignoring Steve's disappointed expression with aplomb that makes Peter suspect that Fury prudently turned off the video on his side, "about that. He's hardly the first recovered prisoner of war. We've got precedents for this shit, Cap, so your little martyr routine is falling on deaf ears here. Heard it all before. Don't give a fuck. You said you wanted to be treated like a member of the team? Here's the bottom line."

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter sees Wade quietly pull his mask up to his nose and stuff his mouth full of popcorn. Peter hesitates for a moment, but then he just decides that darn it, he may as well enjoy the ride on the crazy train.

It's not like they aren't sneaking those kernels from _Tony's_ bowl, so the Avengers can't cast any stones. Or, at least, not righteously.

"You brought in an enemy agent," Fury says, leaving no room for whys and wherefores. He waits for contriteness to win the battle over Steve's face, and then continues: "You did it with the prospect of turning them into an asset – but you did it _without authorization_. We have procedures for this for fucking good reasons, and toting around that shield doesn't make you exempt from the rules."

Steve's chin sinks gradually lower throughout the rant. At this point, he's pretty much hung his head in shame.

Peter holds his breath. He knows that _this_ is the moment when they throw _him_ under the bus, say that _he_ was the one who actually brought Barnes in, never mind that he only did that to stop a threat-

 _This_ , actually, turns out to be when Tony pushes the popcorn bowl into Wade's lap, gets to his feet and steps forward, wiping his hand on his slacks. "No, it doesn't. But, _being my friend_ does." He smiles widely.

Fury can tell what Tony intends to do; that much is obvious when he simply leans forward and pushes a button to cut the connection.

Tony doesn't care. He cocks his hip and declaims: "Ignore Sindibad, Cap. He's just pissy 'cause he's not part of the cool crowd for once. If he even thinks of having a problem with your bae, we're splitting from SHIELD. I can keep us in weapons and costumes until Reindeer Games finally goes off the rails and starts Ragnarok for real, and then for a while after, too. Take it easy. True love eff-tee-dubs, and all that."

Peter gets up, too, and walks out of the room, deliberately not allowing himself the chance to think about what he's doing and why. He stops before he reaches the elevator and then gives himself time to think.

He can't say he much likes these parts of the Tower. Everything's streamlined in the corridors, and that makes sense in a modern building, but what he would like right now is a niche. Just someplace he could tuck himself away and feel sorry for himself and wait until Wade comes after him and finds him and distracts him and makes him smile.

There are no niches, predictably. Peter pushes open the emergency door to the staircase and sits down on the second uppermost stair. It takes thirty seconds with no movement for the sensors to detect before the lights go out and he's enveloped in darkness.

The heavy door, designed to hold against explosions and fire and gas, muffles sound enough that Peter can barely hear the Avengers anymore, even though someone is shouting again. The shouting doesn't worry him. It would if Bruce were here, but Bruce wisely removed himself from the situation entirely.

Peter misses him.

Still, he has more immediate worries. What will happen to him when the Avengers split from SHIELD? Wade's deal is with SHIELD. SHIELD are the ones holding their leashes – not the Avengers.

And the Avengers have already proved that they'll try to help him if they can, but if it comes down to taking sides, nobody will stand next to Peter. It will be high school P.T. all over again.

The emergency door swings open, and Peter only just manages to squint in time to prevent being blinded.

Wade hops down next to him and mirrors his thinking pose. "What's wrong, Gumdrop?"

"I'm okay, Wade," Peter says, and for a given value of 'okay' it's even true. "Just feeling sorry for myself."

Wade's arm goes right back along Peter's shoulders, as if Wade was scared that Peter would run away or just disappear, and that by holding him – not too close or too tight, but just anchoring him – he would keep him nearby for as long as possible. The funny thing is, Peter can feel it working.

"Share. I'm gonna feel sorry for you with you."

Peter leans his head on Wade's shoulder, bumping Bea's handle with his temple. There's not a whole lot he can say that wouldn't sound like it's coming from a kindergartener. He sighs. And says: "It's not fair."

Wade bites down on a snort. He puts his hand on top of the Spider-Man mask, cradling the back of Peter's head. "Yeah, that's what they call a _tautology_ , Spides. It means it's always true, no matter what you do." Then he pokes Peter into sitting up again, hops up and dances five stairs down backwards, until he stands eye-to-eye with Peter. "I made it so they like us now, baby boy. That gives you better chances for back up or extraction if you ever need it. Stark will walk over hot coals for you, methinks – but, granted, he'd walk over hot coals for any Sam, Clint or Steven, so that may not mean much."

Peter gets the 'Tom, Dick and Harry' reference in there, but can't figure out the roster. The rhythm would work with other members of the team, too. "Why not Bruce?"

"For that guy, Stark might burn down the world. Or, at least, the part of the world he doesn't own. That might not be much. I hear there's a country in Africa. And Doom's got that private land of his that got sovereignty by dint of its owner knowing how to build magic-nuclear weapons and not hesitating to use them."

It sounds nice, but Peter can't believe but see the inconsistencies. The thing that brought him here wasn't quite jealousy, not really, just a feeling of being excluded from the clique. Maybe Tony's just showing off for Steve now – it does sometimes seem like Tony can't not show off for Steve, like it's been hardwired into him – with all the lobbying for Barnes.

Or, maybe…

Be fair, Petey, says Peter's inner Wade. It ain't like you were great friends with the Avengers when you brought my murderous self 'round. Iron Dude and Mr America been tight for years.

Peter has to concede that.

And Clint was supporting Spider-Man pretty much from the start, just because he empathized with the situation.

And Bruce, too, remained cautiously supportive, which… he's hardly ever more forward about anything… with the exception of Hulk moments when he's the most forward of Peter's acquaintances, beating even people like Tony and Steve and Fury and _Wade_.

Peter grimaces under his mask. This grown-up shtick is horrible. He doesn't want to be mature. "Can't we just go TP someone's front yard?" he whines.

Wade's jumping up and down in excitement within a second. "Triskellion!"

Peter thinks this is probably a horrible idea. But that's kind of the point, and he's _in_.

x

Peter gathers further evidence for his theory of pocket dimension in Deadpool's suit when Deadpool pauses in the middle of the operation, pulls out a carton from _somewhere_ and eggs Fury's car.

He's too fast for Peter to do anything about it but groan at the vision of future reaming out by the zombie Director, so Peter just continues defacing the front of the SHIELD Headquarters in Washington D.C. with toilet paper, water-soluble spray paint and display pyrotechnics, because he's already gone this far, so why not?

'This far' includes going along when Wade 'borrowed' one of SHIELD's quinjets, flew them over to a nearby military base, then 'borrowed' one of SHIELD's vans, loaded it up with so much contraband that they both had to work together to push the doors shut, and drove them here. Here is the open place in front of the Triskellion building, with the road and the parked cars and the benches that no one ever uses, and the flagpole that's only used by new agents on dares.

The only thing Peter's ever seen fluttering on it was someone's stolen underwear.

Then again, he's only been here twice before, so maybe that isn't exactly the normal state of things.

He finishes with the spray painting. Wade's done the pyrotechnics installation, and now stands in the centre of their decorative efforts, holding a water gun so huge that it must have been commissioned specially.

"What is this?!" demands Director Hill in the distinct tones of cold rage.

"Independence Day celebration!" Wade retorts – and, whoa, it is actually about eleven p.m. on the third of July, so this excuse unexpectedly flies. "We're just missing the aliens now- there he goes!"

Thor lands with a thud. Concrete cracks under his feet. Cars jump and alarms begin to blare.

Wade salutes with one finger; Thor cheerfully returns the gesture.

"Friend Clint explained to me the history of this excellent American tradition!" exclaims the demigod.

Peter can tell the exact moment when Director Hill decides that this isn't worth the headache and cedes scene authority to Steve, who has just run out of the building at the head of a huge crowd of agents and affiliates. The place in front of the Triskellion fills up with people and shouting.

This is the moment the fireworks go off.

This sky lights up red and green and yellow and purple, and then orange and blue and red again. In the glow everyone can read the Declaration of Independence, which Peter wrote all over the front of the Headquarters building.

He only meant it as provocation (and was a little too nerdy to go for a dirty poem – he thought this would have a little more social impact or whatever) but now it's sparked talk and the agents close enough to him that he can overhear are talking about the Avengers seceding from SHIELD completely.

Whoops.

Peter looks at Wade.

Wade shrugs, like, what can you do?

Steve is standing in between Barnes and the world on the other side from Thor. Sam is hovering at the edges, looking like he very much wishes to be elsewhere – and Peter isn't surprised, because for all that Thor is the alleged God of Thunder, it is Steve who wears the truly thunderous expression.

"Happy birthday!" Peter exclaims over the din of the crowd, and only afterwards realizes that Wade shouted the same thing pretty much at the same time. He chokes on the crazy blast of mad infatuation that rocks him on his feet. He wants to kiss Wade until they're both breathless-

-but this, maybe, isn't the best time.

" _Birthday_ ," Steve repeats incredulously.

Thor laughs boomingly. Sam snorts. Barnes' face does something weird, hesitant, almost like his muscles are trying to remember how smiling works.

Steve is scowling and pointing at Fury's car.

Peter shrugs. "That was supposed to be a celebratory omelet, but Wade accidentally dropped the eggs. Sorry."

Steve palms his face and mutters something that sounds a little like: "Tony's going to _love_ this."

x

Steve is right: Tony loves the whole shebang, including the idea to show SHIELD the finger and let the Avengers hack it on their own. He enjoys the entire situation, down to Director Fury's enraged yelling and Director Coulson's fruitless attempt to talk Clint into going back over to the dark side as a member of Coulson's current super duper supersecret team comprised of people _younger than Peter_.

Clint, it turns out, has learnt from Coulson this amazing ability to sass his commanding officer through the utter lack of facial expression.

Peter will never be cool enough to do that; it just reinforces the residual bit of hero-worship for Clint he's been nursing.

The downside of the divorce is that Barnes lands firmly in the Avengers' custody, and is suddenly Peter's roommate. Housemate. Whatever you call it when Tony Stark installs you in one of the over-the-top apartments in his skyscraper.

It should have occurred to Peter. It hasn't. So he's taken by surprise when Barnes walks into the penthouse, shadowing Steve – obviously aware that he isn't actually welcome, and trying to gauge the limits of tolerance the occupants have for him.

Peter's on the ceiling before he realizes what he's doing.

He looks down.

The remnants of his dinner – a half-eaten turkey leg and an untouched slice of apple pie, because Tony insisted they celebrate Steve's birthday in style – lie abandoned on the table. Barnes is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve. His hand hovers by his thigh, where he would usually wear a gun, but he's unarmed, so reaching into the vacant place just reminds him of his lack of defenses and makes him more nervous.

He's trying to keep the frustration in, to look unaggressive as possible, but he's setting off Peter's spider senses anyway.

Steve looks up and says: "The Winter Soldier will be a valuable member of the team."

Because _Wade_ wouldn't have been, Peter thinks automatically. Right. Oh, this is the same argument again. Peter keeps cycling back to it in his head. He hoped that the TP-ing of SHIELD might help him let go, but apparently he's not all that good at compartmentalization.

"We'll need the help against AIM," Steve points out.

"Good luck," Peter says, and although he does honestly means it, it comes out sounding sarcastic (which, let's face it, he also means).

Steve looks pained. "Peter-"

"One question," Peter cuts him off. So they are dispensing with the polite charade of them not knowing who Peter actually was. Okay. Fine. Peter has expected that this moment would come, sooner or later, and he will freak out about it at a more opportune time, but right now he's only interested in getting one answer out of Barnes. "I just have one question for him, Steve."

"I don't remember much," Barnes warns him, neck craned back, scowling but clearly indicating that he's willing to talk.

"How nice for you," Peter snaps. He's being a butthole, he knows, but he's never going to forget those few minutes – he's going to keep dreaming them, probably for the rest of his life, and forgetting seems like an unattainable luxury to him.

Barnes' frown deepens. He keeps staring up, like he's never seen a guy make himself comfortable on the ceiling.

Peter closes his eyes, then opens them – which can't be seen through the mask, so he probably just looks like a gawping schmuck – and then takes a deep, bracing breath. "Why?" he demands. "Why did you do that to Deadpool?"

He is prepared for confusion. Barnes might legitimately not remember. He's also prepared for excuses and rationalizations.

What he isn't prepared to is the way Barnes thinks hard for a moment and then suggests, quizzically: "Like in the story. Hansel and Gretel? Like Grimm. Give the Avengers a clear path to the Gingerbread House to follow."

"Gingerbread House being the Hydra base?" Sam suggests.

Barnes' eyes clear up a bit. He nods. "Base. Chair. Lab. Everything about Asset." He has frozen into the semblance of a human puppet again.

Peter shudders, freaked out. He imagines Clint and Natasha following a path of small bloodstains in post offices across the Atlantic Ocean.

He can't deny that the plan worked. The Avengers did take the bait; they did follow the crumbs; they did find the base and acquire the files.

Peter wishes Barnes were hurt as badly as he had hurt Wade.

But, the thing is, cumulatively speaking, Barnes had already been hurt _worse_.

Peter doesn't want to deal with this. He doesn't want the dilemma, the guilt that would come from his emotional ambivalence – he hates the perpetrator of a crime, but one who has perpetrated the crime only because he had already been the victim of an arguably worse crime. It's all jumbled in Peter's head, and he's just human, so he has a few divergent emotional responses on top of it all, and it's just such a mess.

He feels the beginnings of a headache throb through his skull. He _doesn't want to deal with this_.

So he doesn't. He nods to Barnes in tacit acceptance of the answer, ignores Steve's worried 'Spider-Man?' and leaves.

x

Peter has spent the better part of the night untangling the mess of precipitates and consequences so he finally understands who has done what and why, and then had a long plushy-argument with Wade about why nobody was killing anybody over anything. He's cold, tired and miserable after barely three hours of sleep, and the weather outside is doing everything it can to bring his mood further down.

The wind blows and a wave of raindrops spatters against the floor-to-ceiling windows. Everything is dull grey and wet and chilly.

"Is it worth it, when you have to try that hard?" Natasha asks, sitting at the kitchen table and idly stirring her protein shake.

Peter swells in indignation, rounding on her-

And then rationality reasserts itself. He lets all that accumulated air out in an exhale that turns into a long, weary sigh. Of course she's playing him. Playing is her way of life. Coming from Clint, that might have been a genuine question.

Coming from Natasha, it's designed to make him question the question, and that's a little too much questioning for this early in the morning.

"Let me have a coffee before you start with the trick questions," he mumbles.

He tinkers with Tony's space age coffee machine until JARVIS takes pity on him and starts the coffee-acquiring process himself. Peter finds himself with nothing to do, so he checks on the superspy in the room – and, yeah, she's watching him like he got a surprise A in Spanish.

Spanish was never one of Peter's better subjects.

"I've seen romantic relationships end in all sorts of ways," Natasha informs him darkly. "The kind of people who can do this job are mostly too high-strung to let passions fizzle out to friendship, so they either go their separate ways and tear teams apart, or they explode with boatloads of collateral damage. Sometimes literally."

"I feel like we've already gone had this talk," Peter points out and takes possession of his coffee mug. It's tiny compared to the pickle jar, but it smells divine, and he's not going to complain about the form his first dose of today's caffeine comes in.

"That was before you knew what you've gotten into," points out the Black Widow.

Peter stops himself from shrugging. He sips and contemplates. She does have a point. He went into the relationship with both eyes open, but now he's had a look behind the curtain, too. It's not pretty in the backstage.

Not that it's pretty on the stage, either – he snorts, thinking of Wade's reaction to being considered for the epithet – but he has to admit that he hasn't quite expected the particular form of suffering that would come with this love story. He did, of course, expect pain – he's neither an idiot nor that hopelessly naïve – so he was braced, and he managed to power through it. It was a close call, but his life is full of close calls. It's par for course.

"Don't lie to yourself," Natasha demands. "You can build up this willful suspension of disbelief and live in it, for years if you're really good at self-delusion, but it always blows up in the end."

Peter grins. "What you're saying, then, is _congratulations_." Because Peter isn't building any castles of air. He's grounded, and he's ready to let go of his sanity for long periods of time if that is the price.

He has already wet his toes in that wading pool.

He's being a smart aleck, but judging by the twitch of the corners of Natasha's mouth, she likes it. And, yes, Peter's conclusion about her being firmly on his side regarding _Wade_ is correct. She is, after all, Clint's best friend – and Clint has good taste in friends.

"I've seen lifetimes' worth of heartbreak, Peter. Thing is, most people don't know how to cling to the worthwhile things hard enough to keep them when life gets tougher than they expected."

Peter's life has gotten unexpectedly tough way before he met Wade. Maybe that training is what enabled him to survive this. Being Spider-Man prepared him for being Deadpool's lover. Yes, that does sort of make sense.

"Just so you know," she says after a while of companionable silence, "I've talked to Thor. _Congratulations_ on your relationship, yes, but I won't ignore the possible consequences. The fact is that if anything happens to _you_ , I need to know that we have a way of dealing with _him_."

Peter doesn't get aggressive about this announcement. It seems counterintuitive at a glance, but what Natasha is describing is miles away from what happened with the Winter Soldier. Wade has wanted to die for a long time. He doesn't want to right now, and that's a state of mind tied to Peter's presence in his life. When Peter leaves – or dies, which at the moment sounds a lot more likely – Wade will go off the rails.

Natasha is speaking about mercy.

Wade will most likely want it at that point. Peter is going to warn him, of course, make it so that it's Wade's decision, that he would know to run if he wants to live at that point, but that he has the security of knowing the option will be there.

"Good boy," Natasha says, walks away, and leaves Peter to tidy up the remnants of her breakfast.

x

SHIELD, much to Peter's relief, get over their butt-hurt at the Avengers moving out, and don't hesitate to call them in when they are needed.

Which they are soon, because it turns out that Advanced Idea Mechanics are at least as dangerous as Steve implied they may be. They strike in three places at once; most of the Avengers move to cover Washington, D.C. and Detroit.

Peter stays in Manhattan because skyscrapers and Spider-Man are the winning combination. He watches, dismayed, as one of the walking-bomb people blows himself up with half the Statue of Liberty.

One good thing about Steve not being here is that he doesn't have to see that happen.

"Shit," someone mutters via their common frequency.

Peter's mostly tuning everything he hears out, because it concerns things happening in other places, which have apparently been hit a lot more heavily, and he needs to focus on minimizing the damages in New York.

"The explosion is controlled by the cerebellum," Director Coulson says into the comm.

"Oh, thank God!" snaps Steve.

"Jay, recalibrate."

"Roger that, ex-boss," says Clint, overlapping with Natasha's heartfelt: " _Spasiba_."

"It'll tell Fitzsimmons they've done a good job," Coulson replies coolly.

Peter jumps off of the corner of a building and slams an orange-y woman into the ground. Her head bounces, like he expected it to.

The orange glow intensifies.

Peter jumps away just in time to avoid getting crispy fried.

"Brain injuries trigger immediate explosion," he reports.

"Fuck," concludes Tony.

"That's it, people," Director Fury speaks to them for the first time since the team split away from SHIELD. "If your delicate little feelings can handle it, it's neutralization from now on. Anyone glows orange, you go for a headshot. I don't fucking care if anyone's got a problem with this-"

"Roger," says a new voice.

Peter momentarily freezes.

He spurs himself into motion again, because the battle doesn't stop so he can have a _moment_. Still, he hasn't expected Barnes on the comms.

Pop, pop, pop goes the comm.

"Whoa," says Clint. And then there's another series of shots fired. "Loser pays the first round?" he suggests.

"Bucky-"

"You're on," Barnes replies calmly. "Good to know you can shoot anything invented after Rome fell."

Peter listens to them bicker. He hears the friendliness creep in among them, the wariness receding. He feels abandoned. Also, he's going to have to go back on his word to Wade.

He doesn't have a gun, doesn't want one, but there's an AIM suicide bomber walking up the street toward a Subway station that shelters civilians, and Peter can't let him get there.

Suddenly, Wade stands in front of the terrorist, a katana in each hand and head cocked mockingly to the side.

The AIM soldier grins at the katana, wide and nasty. "I dare you."

Wade can get away with dispatching them in close quarters, with contact weapons, because he can't die. Still, Peter doesn't want him to take the challenge, doesn't want to see him blown up or even _just_ burnt-

Wade's blade goes through the bastard's head, slicing it almost neatly, at an angle.

The corpse's glow fades. It turns a normal corpse-ish color and falls ineffectually to the pavement.

Wade steps over it, briefly looking down. "I'd say something cutting, but at this point that's just redundant."

"Thank you," Peter says, as heartfelt as he can.

Deadpool has just killed someone. Deadpool has just (arguably) killed someone for him. Peter thought he would feel conflicted, or perhaps even resentful, but the only emotion he can detect is gratitude.

Wade shrugs. "I didn't wanna blow anyone but you, baby boy."

Peter nods decisively. "There's leagues of difference between sticking it to them and sticking it into them."

Steve's spluttering somewhere a couple of states off. Peter can't believe he just said that. Whoa. Wade just brings out the strangest in him.

Speaking of – Wade lifts both his arms – with swords held upright – and yells: "Pun fight!"

"What?!" comes from the comm in chorus.

Peter magnanimously explains while Wade runs about, cutting _through_ the heads of the AIM assassins. "Like a slap fight, but hurts more."

The New York location has just fallen quiet when a SHIELD helicopter lands. It's not the usual part of clean-up, but Peter guesses that they've got some very interesting specimen here that are going to be carted off straight into the most secret of the secret labs, and he's not asking anymore questions, because he honestly doesn't want to know.

"Hop on," he says to his boyfriend, who gleefully holds onto Peter with both his arms and legs, and lets himself be carried and swung around, delightedly screaming like a kid on a rollercoaster.

Peter takes the scenic tour since he knows how much Wade loves this, and he wants to show his appreciation. If not for Wade, Peter couldn't have remained the _Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man_ today. He would have had to kill, deliberately, intentionally, efficiently.

Or watched innocent people die.

"I love you," he says, even though he knows the wind in their faces will steal the words before Wade hears them.

x

"Oh… um…"

Peter freezes. Which doesn't help much, as he's held up against to wall by – and mostly wrapped around – Wade. Wade doesn't let a witness bother him, so he continues fervently kissing along Peter's nape and slowly peeling the half-unzipped Spider-Man suit off of Peter's shoulders.

"I'll just-"

"Wait!" Peter exclaims.

He clasps Wade's head in a hold that tries to be gentle, but is strong enough to easily snap Wade's neck if he doesn't comply with it and abandon the effort to lick every inch of Peter's skin. Which Peter is totally on board with, don't get him wrong – just not in front of Bruce.

"Oh, hey," Wade says, just now noticing that there's anyone in the world beside the two of them.

Considering that they're still in the common area of the Tower, this lack of situational awareness means that he's _stupidly infatuated_ with Peter. Not news, but flattering nonetheless.

"Hey, Dr Green," Wade says cheerfully.

Bruce looks at him for a prolonged moment – reminding Peter that this is the first time Bruce has seen Wade without the mask – and tension rises in the room as Wade waits for the verdict.

"Sorry," Bruce says to Peter, "but could you maybe _not_ do _that_ where other people might stumble upon you?"

Wade smirks devilishly. "Ooh, but that's half the fun, Fight Club. The suspense. Will they or won't they? And if they will, then who's it gonna be? Aside from _nuestre amigo_ Jarvis, who's like a part of the ship by now, 'cause he watches it all. Are we a threesome, Petey?"

"No," Peter says decisively. "No offence, Jarvis, but I don't want you to participate."

"None taken," replies the A.I. "Miss Potts feels similarly." And then he mimics a sigh of disappointment, just to put the idea out there.

Peter wonders if this is JARVIS being a smart alleck or being crafty with helping Tony's efforts at _persuasion_. He tries to curb his curiosity.

It goes down easier than his libido.

"We socializing?" Wade inquires plaintively, looking up at Peter with eyes full of impending disappointment.

"Later, yeah?" Peter says over his head to Bruce. He's glad Bruce is back, and will tell him so – but _later_ , because this moment belongs to him and Wade. They've both earned it.

"Later," Bruce agrees, and smiles, tacitly expressing that he knows what it's like to be in love and want to make love so much that other things sink into the background and seem momentarily utterly unimportant.

"My room," Peter orders, and then holds on tightly when Wade strides off, carrying him.


	5. Prince Peter and Dragon Deadpool

Epilogue: Prince Peter and Dragon Deadpool

x

Peter showers, pulls on a pair of S.I. sweatpants and Wade's Hello Kitty t-shirt, and goes up to the penthouse.

Wade is left dozing on the bed, as exhausted as he ever really gets, and in an oddly tranquil mood. He snores quietly. He looks _happy_.

It's enough to make Peter feel like he's walking on clouds, so when you consider the post-coital cocktail of hormones in his body and the joy he feels at Bruce's return, it's a wonder he doesn't spontaneously begin floating.

Not even Fury's ugly face on the screen opposite the couch can ruin the night for him.

Bruce is sitting on that couch, glancing from Fury to his phone, to Fury again, and trying to look inconspicuous (like a freshman attempting to cheat) when he types out an answer – presumably to Tony.

"He says you're keeping him on the Helicarrier until tomorrow," Bruce points out to Fury.

The Director harrumphs. "If I let him go, I'll never see a word of report on yesterday. He waved his precious charter into Hill's face and claimed that he _doesn't work for us_ – like that's ever going to fly."

Bruce snorts softly. "Well, we both know what does and does not fly around here, don't we?"

"I'd keep Stark under lock and key if I thought that would keep him from going all 'Br'er Fox' on me."

Oooh, not the briar patch, oooh please no! goes Wade's voice in Peter's head, to illustrate the image of Iron-Man begging not to be thrown over the side of the Helicarrier.

Peter chuckles.

Bruce is smiling. "We both also know how it goes for people who try to keep Tony under lock and key."

Fury nods in agreement. "Agreed. I like to think I'm a little smarter than that. In any case, Banner, good to have you back. I like knowing there's at least one voice of reason in that pack of asylum escapees you call a team. Yes, looking at you there, Parker."

Without waiting for a response, Fury signs off.

Peter unpeels himself from the doorframe where he has been – he thought – inconspicuously lounging, and comes sit next to Bruce. He wants to hug him, but Bruce is not a hugging sort of person, so he offers his fist for a bump.

Bruce obliges him with nary an eye-roll at the juvenileness of the gesture.

"Why do people always talk like sanity's something to aspire to?" Wade asks from the same doorway where Peter has been lurking just moments ago. He bounds over and goes for a high-five, which Bruce also gamely obliges. "Sanity is drab! Sanity is bleak! Sanity is… sad." He throws himself onto the floor at Peter's feet and leans back against Peter's shins. He tilts his head back, face unmasked, scars bared for the whole (mostly deserted) penthouse to see.

Peter puts his hand on Wade's forehead and strokes back as far as he can before he gets blocked by his own knee. He leans down and kisses the ridged skin he has just stroked.

He knows Bruce is watching. He hopes Bruce is beginning to understand. But even if he's not, Peter has the security of knowing that Bruce accepts them as they are.

"Take my word for it," Wade babbles on, "crazy is the new black. It makes you feel cool, and look slimmer. Also, it's fun."

"Insanity is another country," Bruce mutters philosophically. His lengthy efforts to communicate with his greener half explain why he's always had a lot more tolerance for Wade and Peter's weirdness than other people. Aside from the fact that he has trained himself to not react to much of anything.

"They're happy 'bout giving dual citizenships, though. Unlike the Americas. You're lucky your better half was born in the country, or else you'd be here half-illegally. They don't give green cards for green guys, which is honestly just so racist they should lynch someone for it just on principle."

Bruce chokes, like he wants and doesn't want to laugh at the same time.

"Political reference to real-life events. Obligatory fourth-wall-break! Baby boy, can I lampshade the fact that I've just lampshaded this?"

"I don't know…" Peter muses, amused. " _Can_ you?"

Wade springs to his feet and whirls around, jabbing an accusing finger in Peter's direction. "You're too young for dad jokes!"

"It's more of a teacher joke," Peter replies.

"Hmm. Could dig you as the strict teacher. I'll be the very naughty schoolboy in the after-class detention." Wade bends over and wiggles his bottom. "Spank me?"

"Get a room!" Bruce exclaims, hiding his face in his hands – and the laugh finally breaks free.

x

"My debt has mysteriously disappeared," Aunt May says out of blue.

Peter is momentarily stunned. Aunt May's debt is in fact his debt – the cost of his higher education put the Parker household deep in the red – but it is in Aunt May's name. Or _was_ , apparently.

He honestly can't think of anything smarter to say than: "Oh. Did it?"

"Well," Aunt May replies dryly, "it is good to know that it wasn't you going behind my back, Peter, dear, but it does open the question…" She trails off, realization dawning.

Peter doesn't say anything. Still wouldn't know what to say. He has had no clue, but it isn't actually all that difficult to figure out who is the Parkers' benefactor. It could, in theory, be Tony Stark, if things like debts even registered for the man. Peter's pretty sure that Tony isn't aware of the vagaries of being in the red (other than karmic-ly).

Aunt May huffs. "Oh dear me. Wade really does go out of his way for us, doesn't he?"

Peter's teeth ache with the need to _know_ if Aunt May understands that all the money has come out of murder and bounty hunting and… all sorts of violent crime, really. He can't word it in any way that wouldn't immediately reveal the truth, though, so he bites his tongue and stares at his Aunt as hard as he can in the vain hope of reading her mind. Does she know? She must. But she can't? She wouldn't accept it so blithely, would she?

The truth is, Peter simply has no idea.

Blind Al appears in the doorway, shuffling from the guest room to the kitchen with a saucer in her hand… and the shards of a coffee cup piled on top of it.

Aunt May sighs at the sight and goes to take the porcelain from her – to dispose of the shards and wash the saucer and try not to remember that it was Uncle Ben who bought the set for her.

Al shuffles up to Peter and leans into his personal space, saturating it with the stink of cigarettes. "You're banging a mercenary, boy," she mutters with both antagonism and confidentiality that makes her the perfect friend for emotionally crippled people, "the least you can do is keep your Aunt in style."

"Yes, Al," Peter replies obediently.

She smacks him on the butt and walks off with unexpected confidence. Obviously she spends a lot more time at Aunt May's house than Peter expected.

On the other hand, this means that when Peter camps at Wade's, she's not listening to them through the paper-thin walls. Of this, Peter is _very_ glad.

x

It's not Peter's first convention, but it's the first one he attends in costume. Of course, he's just one of many Spider-Men in the joint tonight, so he's enjoying his fifteen minutes of anonymity-

There's someone he knows. It takes a while for him to place the girl; he's only met her the once, and she looks so very different, but he stumbles over nothing and she notices him staring (despite the reflective lenses, dang it).

"Oh, wow. Hi," he says – like a complete idiot – and only afterwards realizes that he's a cosplayer at the moment and there's no real reason for him to know this girl. It looks like he's _hitting on her_ , and that's just _no_.

"Hello…?" she says uncertainly. And then, since she's quick on the uptake, her eyes widen. "Oh. Uh. Hi."

She's _hugely_ pregnant. With the make-up Peter can't be sure, but he doesn't think she's eighteen yet. Also, the person she's clearly romantically attached to is a woman, so signs are pointing in ugly directions.

But. She's alive, and doesn't seem entirely unhappy.

"Sorry," he says. "Didn't mean to bother you. Just – wanted to say hi. So, hi." Crud, he's such a dork.

She grins. "Hi back. And, you know. I kinda hated you for a while, but _thanks_."

Peter runs away before he's forced to make conversation. He wanders all along the artist alley, buys a couple of prints – Spider-Man and Deadpool have not been exactly discreet about their relationship, and there are some pretty cute pictures. There are also many pornographic pictures, and Peter hopes he won't get any of those as a birthday present from any of the Avengers.

He wouldn't mind owning a few of the more… uh… _artistic_ ones, but if he knows Wade, they have already been bought, so he instead stops by another stall to get a kinda melancholy but genuinely _nice_ original painting of the Hulk. It's watercolor, and it's based off a photo of an Avengers' post-op. There's a dog, and the Hulk's petting it.

Peter's not sure how Bruce will react to it, but there's a chance he may like it. So he spends a couple of the fifties Wade slipped him on it.

And then he's in the main hall. There are Iron Men, illustrating the variance of costume design from colored cardboard to actual stylized Middle Age suits of armor. There are Black Widows and Hawkeyes, and Hulks (mostly kids in fluffy costumes, and Peter snaps a few photos – the team will love them), and Thors and Lokis. There's a lone _male_ Pepper leaning into one of the Iron Women, whom Peter also photographs because the couple looks _fantastic_.

And there are Deadpools. So many Deadpools. Peter slinks past one that has to weigh at least four hundred pounds. That is _a lot_ of spandex. Good thing Wade magically transforms tacos and chimichangas and pancakes into abs.

There are Deadpools eating and Deadpools talking and Deadpools shyly sidling up to artists, asking to have their comic books signed. There are Deadpools conversing with Punishers, which Peter knows isn't realistic (mostly because Punisher doesn't much talk, and generally expresses his feelings for Wade with deadly assault).

In any case, it takes about thirty seconds for Peter to find his own Deadpool among these cosplayers of wildly differing credibility. He identifies Wade by the way Wade moves; although, granted, Peter has never before seen him roller skate.

He walks on a course to intercept.

Wade doesn't crash into him. He brakes with some fancy figure-skating maneuver that inspires applause from a few Deadpools and a Domino standing around a button stand.

"Hi, babe," Peter says, putting his arm around Wade's waist.

"Hello," Wade replies, and leans down from his roller-skate height to give Peter a mask-smooch on his forehead. "How did you know it was me?"

"Recognized your butt," Peter lies, and pats one of the glutei in question.

"So, big boy. How's it feel to be able to get legally smashed?"

"Like I still don't want to," Peter replies truthfully. "I get smashed – into things – all the time, and it's never much fun."

Deadpool pouts. Peter can tell even through the mask.

"Never ever ever?"

Peter has to concede that one. "Sometimes it is. But only gentle smashing."

"Smashing is _smashing_!" Wade agrees. "Smushing and smooshing. _Smooching_. Let's smooch, baby-boy-friend, smack and smash together, smother smoothly and-"

"Smile," Peter fills in. "And smile and smile and smile…"

x

One night, in the middle of a routine patrol, after he's webbed up a couple of carjackers but before he helps get down a toddler that climbed to the outer side of a balcony railing on a lark and then couldn't get back, Peter has an epiphany.

He's being a hypocrite.

This shocks him, and he feels quite desolate for a while afterwards – despite successful baby-rescue – because if he hates any character trait in people, it's hypocrisy.

Sure, the Avengers weren't exactly ecstatic about Deadpool's inclusion in their extended team, and Steve did threaten Peter that one time, but on the whole they came around and by now Peter can mostly rely on them, too.

On the other hand, Peter's treating Barnes to a complete rejection.

He decides there and then – sitting on top of the Chrysler building, in his favorite spot – that he's going to stop. He's better than that. He's going to act in a way Uncle Ben could be proud of, and he's going to start tomorrow.

x

Tomorrow in the early evening he comes by the Tower with a plastic bag full of Wade's homemade tacos.

x

The strangest thing about the Winter Soldier is still the quiet.

He sits silently, motionless; he watches and listens and doesn't speak without being spoken to. Not even in his own defence, and that is something that Peter recognizes from years of schoolyard bullying. It's the hope that, even though they are talking about you, as long as you remain the subject and don't try to personally make yourself a part of the situation, they will not include you.

You may yearn to be included, but by now you know that inclusion equals pain, and most days it's not worth it.

"Tacos?" Peter asks, standing a step closer than what he judges to be safe distance.

Barnes looks up at him, startled by being addressed.

Peter lifts the bag in his hand. "Wade doesn't know the meaning of moderation. He makes them until he runs out of ingredients and they're _heavenly_ , but there's only so much I can eat without puking my guts out and-"

Barnes nods and says, quietly: "Thanks."

Peter seizes onto this excuse to cut off his rambling. He hands over the whole bag into Barnes' keeping and starts backing away. Barnes is staring at him with that stare that is trying to judge Peter's sanity, which is both futile and insulting coming from the guy that gets frequent flier miles on brainwashing, so Peter points over his shoulder and explains: "Kitchen. Plates. Napkins? Napkins."

And goes get them.

x

Peter lies with his face buried in Wade's abs for as long as he can until the need to breathe is stronger than the desire to remain buried in his lover's skin, and he turns his head to the side. The abdominal aorta under his ear goes _thrumm_ , _trhumm_ , _thrumm_ …

It feels like every single muscle and sinew and organ shift in Wade's body, even though he just stretches and then puts his arms under his head. He probably wants a cigarette now, but he's really good about not smoking in the bedroom since Peter told him how much he dislikes the smell.

Peter's stomach gurgles.

"…says the guy who digested our baby," mutters Wade.

The really, truly messed up thing about Peter's life if that he's not sure if Wade's joking or genuinely upset. It was funny to take the idea of a food baby and run with it, but in Wade's head things get mixed up, and sometimes details – like it all being a joke in the first place – get misplaced.

Wade suddenly sits up – Peter only feels the beginning of the flex of those muscles before he is dislodged – and leans in until their noses are touching. "Show me those eyes. Oh, crud. Not that you're not pretty when you cry, Petey-pie – see, I'm trying out poetry for you, this is siriuz bizniz – you're totes pretty, but don't. Don't cry. Yeah? This is nothing. Last time I met Domino, she started out giving me a sex realignment operation with a switchblade. I'd make a swell gal, but it didn't take. Still no babies for us."

Peter cranes his neck, kisses Wade's nose (because what else can he do at this point?) and shrugs. "I don't think the world's ready for our progeny. I've seen Arachnophobia – I don't want our baby growing up hated."

"Yeah, hate sucks," Wade agrees contemplatively. Then he grabs Peter and pulls him up as he lets himself fall back into the bedding. "Let's make love instead!"

Peter kisses his breastbone. "A plus for that segue, Wade-"


End file.
